Grey Walker wrote this review for Green Man Review.
“As a kid I had thought a lot like an adult. As an adult, I thought a lot like a child. In other
words, I had really been pretty much the same person all my life.” — Bruce Brooks
Those of us who have been reading folk tales since childhood and have never stopped (which obviously includes most of the the staff at Green Man Review) can strongly relate to what Bruce Brooks says above. After all, folk tales in our day are usually marketed to children, even though they have traditionally been told to multi-generational audiences. And it seems to be very often true that people who form strong attachments to folk and fairy tales when they hear or read them as children continue to read and love them as adults.
Given this transgenerational appeal of certain kinds of stories, there are still other stories which are written specifically for children. What makes these stories “children’s stories”? More importantly, what makes a good children’s story? Judy K. Morris engages these questions in her new book, Writing Fiction for Children: Stories Only You Can Tell, newly published in September 2001.
Morris is a writer of childrens’ books herself, and she also teaches creative writing to both children and adults, so she is certainly in a position to speak with some authority. The advice she offers here to would-be children’s fiction writers makes sound sense. For example, she says, a central quality of good childrens’ stories is that they traditionally have a sense of possibility, of the potential for change; nihilism and despair are not themes in childrens’ classics. In fact, Morris would argue that a children’s author has an ethical responsibility toward children, not to let them down.
One of the questions that children have always asked, but with more poignancy today, is “what can a kid really do?” How can a modern child imagine him- or herself a hero in his or her own life story, when even playgrounds and sidewalks are no longer considered safe? Morris argues for good books that provide children a way to escape out of a world that frightens and seeks to stifle them, but she also urges children’s authors to offer children heroes who are like themselves, who do what children can imagine themselves doing.
She also insists that a good children’s book will leave space for its reader to move into the story, to inhabit and own it, if only for a while. All people who read stories like to feel as if they are absorbed by them, but children especially thrive on the interaction between story and life, learning in turn to think about the stories of their own lives, and how they can themselves be protagonists, not just spectators.
So, does all of this mean that Morris thinks that childrens’ authors must write books primarily to “benefit” children, “help” them, “teach” them? By no means. She also asserts heartily that children will not read books they don’t enjoy, nor should they. Good childrens’ books are thrilling, amusing, and just downright fun. Preaching is out. Lively, strong characters, vivid scenery, and entertaining plots are in.
Morris writes about the philosophy behind children’s literature, but she also offers chapters solidly packed with practical suggestions for the nitty-gritty of writing. Each chapter contains exercises for the reader to try in his or her own writing. In fact, Morris states that the exercises themselves are the heart of the book, the main impetus for writing it in the first place. The writing “philosophy” she offers really serves as context for the exercises, leading the reader from one to the next. The reader has the sense that, if he or she were to work through the book from beginning to end, seriously attempting each exercise as it comes, he or she would have at the finish something solid: good pieces of writing that can perhaps be turned into a book, a book for children.
People who collect books about writing the way some of us collect cookbooks will want to add this one to their collections. It’s well-written, even entertaining, and the exercises are very helpful. On the other hand, someone who is looking for just one good resource on writing for children could equally well choose this book. There is plenty here to go on for a long time.
(University of Illinois Press, 2001)
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