This last of the “Age It
Right” series was posted on the Indiana Writers’ Consortium blog on August 16,
2017. There will, however, be another post on writing for children next week.
Age It Right: Part III
Vocabulary is an important
part of aging a children’s book. There are several resources to guide you on
vocabulary level, including Children’s
Writers’ Word Book by Alihandra Mogilner and online vocabulary and spelling
lists for parents and teachers arranged by grade. Use them.
But don’t rely on them.
First, these lists can’t
cover every word in a child’s vocabulary. Just because a word isn’t on the list
doesn’t mean your readers won’t know it.
Second, readers want to
be challenged. For each of the middle-grade books I have completed so far, I
used between six and nine beta readers spread over four grades. I asked them to
complete a questionnaire, and here are two of the questions I asked:
Were there any words you didn’t know before but could figure
out from the story? If so, write them here.
Were there any words that you didn’t understand unless you
looked them up in a dictionary or asked someone older? If so, write them here.
Even though I frequently
used words from the fifth and sixth grade lists, the third and fourth grade
beta readers listed them in response to the first question rather than the
second, indicating that they got the meaning from the text. So don’t let these
lists limit you.
While it is important to
challenge your readers, it is equally important not to frustrate them. If they
have to make frequent trips to the dictionary (or to the kitchen to ask their
parents), they’ll put the book down and leave it there.
So how can you challenge
without frustrating? The best approach is to use context clues. In my first
middle-grade book, Desert Jewels,
Emi’s parents tell her to come to the parlor after she finishes washing the
dishes. I don’t come right out and tell readers that “parlor” was a common word
for living room or what we might now call the family room, but when she got
there she found Papa reading a newspaper and Mama knitting a sock and she sat
on a piano stool to talk to them (implying the presence of a piano). Other
passages explicitly mention the piano in the room and a fancy clock that sits
on top of it. The piano and Emi’s parents’ activities while in the parlor help today’s
readers understand what the room is.
Then there is the word
“spews,” which occurs in a tanka (a type of Japanese poem) that begins the
book. It was on one beta reader’s list of words that she had never heard before
but could figure out from the context. In this case, it is the words
immediately around it that provide the clues:
Hate spews from your
lips,
Calling me a “Dirty
Jap.”
I don’t understand.
Although I don’t look
like you,
I am an American.
Although context clues
are the best way to increase a child’s vocabulary, there are rare times when
they are not sufficient or when using them makes the passage convoluted or
clunky. Desert Jewels tells the story
of a Japanese American girl caught up in the anti-Japanese sentiment of World
War II. I used some Japanese words for authenticity, but I couldn’t define them
by context alone. In some cases the solution was simple—my protagonist didn’t
understand them either, so she asked what they meant, and the reader learned
along with her. But that approach won’t work if the person asking would already
know, so use it sparingly.
“Oh,” you may say, “I’ll
just use a glossary.” Personally, I think that’s a copout. Expecting your
readers to leaf back and forth between the story and a glossary is only a
little better than sending them to the dictionary. Rely on context clues and a
rare question instead.
That said, I did add a
short glossary to Desert Jewels because
of the Japanese words and some important but now mostly archaic English words
and terms used at the time. But it is there to reinforce what the reader learns
through context clues and the occasional question, not to replace it.
So when choosing vocabulary,
write your story to challenge your readers without frustrating them.
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