Apr 20-22, 2007
Writing for children isn’t harder or easier than writing for adults. It’s just different. To write authentically for young readers, we must reinhabit the bewildering, funny, silly, sometimes tragic world of childhood: unique, yet full of unexplained mysteries, acutely felt emotions, and unending objects to be looked at, touched, smelled, listened to, and tasted. Our senses vibrate with unequaled intensity, while our developing logic sometimes makes perfectly reasonable leaps that turn out to be wholly mistaken. The unflinching repossession of our childhoods provides us with unlimited source material.
Like all good writing, writing for children requires of its writer an understanding of story structure, an eye for character, and an ear for dialogue. Add to this the child’s-eye view and a poet’s ability to weigh each word for sound, rhythm, and meaning, using not one syllable too many nor one too few. This writing takes adult skills: craft, discipline, self-editing. If we hope to publish, we’ll need some understanding of children’s book market cycles.
In this workshop, we become double visionaries, traveling between childhood and adulthood. We’ll talk, write, move, read aloud, clarify whether we’re writing for children, as children, or as adults looking back – in which case the genre may not be the right fit. We’ll examine how contemporary authors of children’s books achieve double vision. We’ll briefly touch on the early picture book, the “mood book,” the “concept book,” books with actual plots, humor, the “middle-aged children’s book,” and young-adult novels. We’ll plumb our own expertise and map what an individual practice of writing for children might look like for us. This workshop is for those who write for children or 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 and now has over 30 published children’s books, including Half a Moon and One Whole Star,which have won many awards. She’s addressed the American Library Association, the International Reading Association, countless writers’ conferences, and book festivals, and she’s the daughter of children’s book writer-editor Charlotte Zolotow. She’s also published two novels, a book of poetry, and severaal cookbooks, including Passionate Vegetarian and the forthcoming Cornbread Gospels. Her workshop, Fearless Writing, has been taught in many countries and we welcome the return of this engaging, talented woman.