On the way to ‘Z’: Writing for reading kids

I’ve been reading a lot of kids’ books these days–more than usual. Lately, I read kids’ books to my eight year old, and science books to my twelve year old. But for the last few weeks, I’ve been reading books assigned for a workshop on writing for children that I’m taking this weekend.

In our family, reading is big. In the time when other families watch TV, we read. My husband and I love reading our old favorites with our kids. We love reading aloud and still do even though both of them are readers on their own. We listen to books on tape in the car. We take stacks of books out of the library each week.

So I have been interested in the books they chose to have us discuss for the workshop. Obviously, they chose the books as good examples of books in each of the categories that children’s book publishers separate books into. The problem I have is, my kids simply don’t fit into those categories, and neither do many of the kids we know. When I read many books that are supposed to appeal to kids their age, I am simply perplexed.

A while back, I wrote about the problem of finding books for young gifted readers on the Write4Kids blog. With one exception, the books I read for the workshop highlight the problems we have in finding great literature for our kids.

The book they chose that represents an easy reader is Amelia Bedelia. Now, we’ve read a lot of Amelia Bedelia in our house–so much that I can recite parts of it from memory. But it was not a book our kids were interested in at the target age (5-7). That’s a book we read when they were preschoolers. My daughter has always enjoyed rereading her favorite picture books and early readers, so I’m sure she has pulled it off the shelf many times since then (certainly, she won’t let me give it away!), but it wasn’t appropriate for her age or reading level when it was supposed to be.

Amber Brown is not a Crayon is the book they chose to highlight the chapter book phase. Amber is in third grade. The book took me approximately fifteen minutes to read, and that was with plenty of distractions. When my son was in third grade, he wouldn’t even have glanced at this book–he didn’t waste his time on any book that short. My daughter just finished third grade and is working her way through Harry Potter. She might have been interested in this book in first grade, though its heavy emphasis on the school experience, use of sentence fragments and one-sentence paragraphs, and jargony kids’ speech would probably not have drawn her in.

Heart of a Shepherd was their Middle Grade (ages 8-12) choice. I actually enjoyed reading this book for a few reasons. One was that this book, set amongst devout Christians, most of them current or veteran members of the armed forces, living on ranch land in Eastern Oregon, seemed exotic to me. I enjoyed getting to know the characters, who were very lovingly and respectfully portrayed. The fact that the characters themselves didn’t agree on religious faith allowed me to feel that the book wasn’t preaching a specific religion at the reader.

However, I felt again that the book was aimed downward at children’s expected abilities rather than upward at inspiring them to more. Though the fleshed-out scenes were enjoyable and the plot compelling, all the meaning and depth were lost by a book that resembled a sketch more than a tapestry. I got my 12-year-old, in their target audience, to start it. But he never would finish after he dismissed it a few chapters in. There just wasn’t enough meat to it.

The only book that I thought was developed enough to engross my young readers was their choice for Young Adult fiction, Chains. My son did sail through it quickly, but he and I were able to have an interesting conversation afterwards about the Revolutionary War time and the life of slaves at that time. Also, we just happened to be traveling to New York when we read it, so it was fascinating to read the details of 18th century Manhattan. This is not, however, a book for younger children. Full of the agonizing details of the lives of slave children at this time, I’m not going to suggesting this one for our book club anytime soon.

So I find myself in a pretty typical situation: I am very willing to believe that these books represent what the wide center of the book-buying public actually wants. Publishers have made a science of finding that out. But as I turn back to what I consider my real mission in life, writing fiction, I find I have no interest in writing for this book-buying public. The books I loved as a child and the books that have hooked my kids in are very seldom the ones that follow publishing-industry rules. When they thought I should be reading Amber Brown, I was actually reading A Little Princess. When they thought I should be reading Heart of a Shepherd, I’d thrown in the towel on kids’ books and spent a summer reading War and Peace.

Now, the fact is, I didn’t really appreciate War and Peace as a young teen. I would have loved to read something more appropriate, but I’d literally gone through my public library from A to Z and read all the juvenile fiction they had to offer. There are many, many more kids’ books today, but my kids have zipped through stacks of them on their way to ‘Z.’ More books, same problem.

Now, of course, I know that the market for kids like mine is necessarily smaller than the market for “Hi-Lo” books (High Interest – Low Readability, a new category of books for reluctant readers).

But ‘success’ isn’t always what the mainstream defines it as. Sometimes success is fulfilling a need that most of the world doesn’t even notice. If I could write one book for kids like mine that reached other kids, I’d call that success. It may not get me on the bestseller list, but I’d like to watch a young, voracious reader curl up with a book I’d written, something that — for a few days — slows her trip to ‘Z.’