April 8-10, 2005
Writing for children is neither harder nor easier than writing for adults. It is different. It requires the unflinching repossession of our actual childhoods, along with the adult skills of writing as craft, discipline, and art. It calls us to become double visionaries. Adults are amnesiacs: we’ve forgotten the unadulterated world of childhood. To write authentically for young readers, we must look out through the eyes of the children we were. All childhoods are unique, yet all are full of unexplained mysteries and acutely felt emotions. Sensual, with unclear, confusing boundaries, the child’s world is tragic, funny, and terrifying. It overflows with infinite objects to be touched, tasted, smelled, looked at, and listened to. Our five senses vibrate with an intensity we will never again equal and our developing logic makes sensible leaps that are often wrong.
Any childhood we can really remember as an adult provides a writer with infinite source material. But to turn it into completed works of art we need more. Good writing for children, as for adults, compels its readers. It requires most of the following: an understanding of story structure, an eye for character, an ear for dialogue, a poet’s ability to strip to essentials, using not one word too many or too few, weighing each word for rhythm and meaning.
In this workshop, we’ll travel between childhood and craft. We’ll talk and write. We’ll read aloud. We’ll become double-visionaries. Are we writing for children or as children? In this first category, we’ll visit Maurice Sendak, Charlotte Zolotow, Margaret Wise Brown, Dr. Seuss, William Steig, and Cynthia Rylant. In the second we’ll visit James Agee, Truman Capote, Dylan Thomas, e e cummings, and Katherine Mansfield. We’ll examine how three contemporary children’s books authors achieved their double vision; what came from childhood, what from adulthood, and how they intersected. We’ll briefly touch on the early picture book, the “mood book,” the “concept book,” books with an actual plot, humor in children’s books, the “middle aged children’s book,” and young adult novels. We’ll plumb our own expertise and map out what an individual practice of writing for children might look like for us. This workshop is for those who write for children, those who would like to, those who just enjoy children’s literature, those in education, librarians, and parents and grandparents of young children.
Crescent Dragonwagon sold her first children’s picture book when she was sixteen. Her 30 published books for children include the Golden Kite Award-winner Home Place, and the Coretta Scott King Award-winner Half a Moon and One Whole Star. She’s spoken at the American Library Association, the International Reading Association, countless writers’ conferences and book festivals, and she’s the daughter of children’s book writer and editor Charlotte Zolotow. Besides children’s books, she’s published two novels, a book of poetry, and several culinary memoirs, including Passionate Vegetarian, a James Beard Award Winner. She’s appeared on Good Morning America, Today, CNN, and TVFN and her workshop Fearless Writing has been taught all over the world. She recently returned to sledding after a 42-year hiatus and is considering trapeze lessons. We look forward to her first visit to Rowe.