A Tribute to Beverly Cleary

 

Beverly Cleary died in March, just short of her 105^th birthday. She was a classic children’s author who made it her mission to write about ordinary children with ordinary lives—and make everyone want to read those stories. That’s a real talent.

A professional children’s librarian, Beverly’s fiction was shaped by comments she heard from reluctant patrons. The boys, who were brought in by their teacher during school hours, weren’t interested in what the library had to offer. Instead, they asked where the books were “for kids like us.”  So when Beverly wrote her first book, Henry Huggins, she remembered incidents that had happened to boys she knew and changed them to fit the book.

Beverly’s second book was Ellen Tebbits. Today it is one of her lesser-known works, but not to me. Ellen Tebbits was one of the first books I owned as a child, purchasing it through the Scholastic Book Club at school. I loved it then, and I love it now.

Ellen Tebbits is a good example of how well Beverly fulfilled her mission. Ellen and I shared a similar experience, although mine occurred several years after I first read the book. In the first chapter, Ellen is desperate to keep her friends from finding out that her mother makes her wear woolen underwear. When I was in junior high, somebody noticed there were three straps under my blouse. The bra and slip straps were okay (many girls wore slips back then), but the third strap was an undershirt and the girls in my class laughed over it.

I just finished reading Beverly Cleary’s two memoirs, A Girl from Yamhill (through high school) and On My Own Two Feet (from college through marriage and the publication of her first book). Like with her fiction, she takes what was a relatively ordinary life and makes it interesting.

One amusing fact is her attitude towards reading at home. Her mother frequently read aloud to her, but Beverly refused to read to herself outside school. Because of a sub-par first-grade teacher and days missed due to illness, she could barely read when she started second grade. Her second-grade teacher quickly changed that, but Beverly still didn’t read at home.

Thanks to Miss Marius, I could read, but I refused to read outside of school.

“Everyone in our family has always loved to read,” said my puzzled mother. “I can’t understand why you won’t.”

Neither could I, but I felt reading should be confined to school and only when required.

Fortunately, she got bored one rainy Sunday afternoon during third grade, so she picked up a book and was hooked.

But I’m going to concentrate on several of the lessons that I and other writers can learn from her experience.

First was her determination to always try. In fourth grade, a store across from her school announced an essay contest, and many of her classmates said they were going to enter. I’m guessing Beverly’s essay was good, but that wasn’t the reason she won. Nobody else had even tried.

Similarly, she entered a Camp Fire Girls contest for a bulletin cover, and she “produced a cover of sorts. Once again I won a prize, not because my cover had any artistic merit, but because no one else entered the contest.”

As Beverly wrote after telling about the essay contest, “This incident was one of the most valuable lessons in writing I ever learned. Try! Others will talk about writing but may never get around to trying.”

During the writing process, Beverly tried to follow her mother’s advice to make it funny and keep it simple. And after her first book was published, she resolved to ignore all trends and not be influenced by money.

Anyone who is interested in writing for children, or simply wants to learn about children’s authors, should read A Girl from Yamhill and On My Own Two Feet. The last chapter of On My Own Two Feet, which talks about the process she used when writing Henry Huggins, is especially helpful for aspiring children’s authors.

So get out and read before you write.

Writing Middle-Grade Fiction

 

Five weeks ago I used a post discussing Madeleine L’Engle’s philosophy about writing for children. This week I’m giving you a laundry list of techniques that work with her ideas, making these two posts the perfect book-ends for a series on writing for children. Today’s post was published on the Indiana Writers’ Consortium blog on March 14, 2018.

Writing Middle-Grade Fiction

As mentioned in my May 31, 2021 post, middle-grade fiction is adult fiction written for a younger audience. In other words, middle-grade readers expect the same tightly written story, gripping plot, and believable characters that adults do. So don’t attempt to write middle-grade fiction unless you are willing to learn the techniques used by respected authors who write for grown-ups.

What are these techniques? Here is a partial list.

·       Hook the reader at the very beginning (the first sentence, paragraph, or page).

·       Use a consistent point-of-view. Even if there are several POV characters, make the POV consistent within a scene.

·       Show, don’t tell.

·       Give the protagonist and other major players distinctive personalities and individual character arcs.

·       Ensure that your main plot has rising stakes and plenty of conflict and tension. Middle-grade readers can handle a lot of bad news (think Harry Potter).

·       Write natural-sounding dialogue that doesn’t copy actual speech (e.g., avoid words like “um,” pauses, and meaningless words and phrases unless they convey something about the character or the action).

·       Eliminate unnecessary description, dialogue, and action. If it doesn’t add something vital to the story, cut it out.

·       Write with strong nouns and verbs (avoiding most adjectives and adverbs).

·       Trust your readers (e.g., don’t tell readers what they can figure out for themselves).

·       Provide a satisfying ending. Surprises are good, and the reader doesn’t have to see it coming. But the reader should be able to look back with hindsight and say, “of course.”

Look for writers’ conferences and online classes that teach these principles. And since they are the same for older audiences, you aren’t limited to conferences and classes geared to middle-grade authors.

Obviously, there are a few differences between adult and middle-grade fiction, and I discussed those in earlier posts. But the actual techniques are the same.  

As Madeleine L’Engle said, “a children’s book must be, first and foremost, a good book, a book with a young protagonist with whom the reader can identify, and a book which says yes to life.”¹

So if you want to write one, first learn the basics of writing fiction for adults.

__________

¹ Walking on Water

Age It Right: Part III

 

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.

Age It Right--Part II

 

This is a reprint of my August 9, 2017 post from the Indiana Writers’ Consortium blog.

Age It Right: Part II

When writing for children, the subject matter must be suitable for the age level. That doesn’t mean you can’t deal with tough issues, but you must do it appropriately.

I’ll use death as an example.

Even the youngest children can be faced with the death of a loved one, so it makes sense to cover the issue in picture books. Some tell a story using animals as characters. Others talk about the death of a pet. Then there are books like Tomie dePaola’s Nana Upstairs & Nana Downstairs, which emphasizes the memories that remain after a boy’s great-grandmother dies. Regardless of the approach, the purpose at this age is always to comfort and never to frighten.

In picture books, the death usually occurs by natural causes, such as sickness or old age. There is no violence.

Although violence is still unusual, middle-grade books treat death differently. Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia is the classic middle-grade novel on the subject. It begins by developing the friendship between the protagonist, Jess, and the new girl, Leslie. We come to love both characters, and when Leslie dies in an accident we cry with Jess over his (and our) loss. But the death takes place off-stage, and Jess learns to live with it. If you want to know more, you’ll have the read the book for yourself.

Bridge to Terabithia doesn’t treat death as gently as picture books do, but it still has a lighter touch than most young adult fiction. In fact, YA books can be quite dark. Two World War II novels by Ruta Sepetys illustrate this.

In between shades of gray, fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother, and her brother are arrested by the Soviets and sent to Siberia. Salt to the Sea follows four young people, three of whom are fleeing through East Prussia to escape the Soviets. Both books contain multiple deaths. Many are onstage, and all result from cruelty. As readers, we never come to terms with those deaths, and that’s how it should be.

As you can see, the age of the audience doesn’t necessarily limit the subject matter, but it does dictate how the writer treats it.

So tread carefully.

Age It Right: Part I

 

The next three posts are from a series I wrote for the Indiana Writers’ Consortium in 2017, with minor modifications to update some of the material. This particular article was published on August 2, 2017.

Age It Right: Part I

One of the most important—and difficult—aspects of writing for children is getting the age level right. Unfortunately, aging books appropriately is more of an art than a science. The best advice I can give you is to read recently written, currently popular books aimed at your audience. If you don’t know what they are, go to a physical bookstore and see what it carries on its shelves, then take them home and read them. Or you can get them at the library (or for your e-book) after you’ve complied a list of titles, but don’t do your original research there. A brick and mortar bookstore gives you a better idea of what today’s children are actually reading.

Years ago, I decided to write a series of early chapter books. I read books in that category, studied length and vocabulary levels, and wrote my first two masterpieces. Then I submitted them to publishers and my dream collapsed. I’m particularly grateful to the one publisher who gave me detailed comments that helped me see that I didn’t understand what was appropriate for my audience.

I shelved that project and turned to writing for adults. But eventually I gave children’s books another try, this time at the middle-grade level. I have published two middle-grade historical novels (Desert Jewels and Creating Esther) as Kaye Page and have written several more that are currently circulating among publishers and agents.

Although the general process is more art than science, there are some guidelines you should be familiar with when writing for children, and these guidelines are more science than art. They aren’t rules, and if you are J.K. Rowling or have an established following, you may be able to ignore them without serious consequences. But most of us are better off sticking to the guidelines.

The guidelines vary from publisher to publisher and few people are in complete agreement about what they are, but the following chart is representative. The categories come from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and I referred to several sources when preparing the actual guidelines.

 In general, children prefer to read about main characters who are just slightly older than the reader. As for length, when writing middle grade and young adult fiction, the longer lengths listed in the chart are for fantasy and science fiction, which tend to be longer than other genres. And don’t confuse category and genre. Children’s books—especially at the middle grade and YA levels—cover the same range of genres as adult books do, from historical to humorous to fantasy to YA romance. The “type” in the chart is a category, not a genre.

Although the guidelines are helpful, the hardest part of aging your book is finding the right subject matter and sensitivity level. That is the topic of next week’s blog post.

Writing Advice from Madeleine L'Engle: Writing for Children is the Same as Writing for Adults

 

As I mentioned in a recent blog post, I have just finished preparing an index of all the blog posts I have written since January 2010. As I did so, I noticed a number of posts that are worth repeating. Since it’s hard work to come up with new ideas each week, I’m going to take a break from writing new material. For the next five weeks I’ll be repurposing articles I wrote for the Indiana Writers’ Association blog about writing for children. The middle three were part of a series and the first and last were stand-alone posts, but they all fit together like the pieces of a puzzle.

This post is from May 16, 2018.

Writing Advice from Madeleine L’Engle: Writing for Children is the Same as Writing for Adults

Madeleine L’Engle was a children’s writer who died in 2007. She is best known for A Wrinkle in Time and other children’s fantasies. The advice in this post is taken from Walking on Water, which combines writing advice with reflections on her life as a writer.

The passage below comes from a chapter called “Names and Labels,” where L’Engle tries to dispel the idea that writing for children is different than writing for adults.

Nancy Berkowitz, long a great friend of children’s books and their writers, told me last year that I’d given her the best definition of a children’s book that she’d heard. Having completely forgotten ever giving such a definition, I asked eagerly, “What was it?”

“A children’s book is any book a child will read.”

First my children and now my grandchildren are proof of this, moving from children’s books marketed for their own age range—the girls are ten and eleven years old—to any grown-up novel I think would appeal to them. All they require is a protagonist with whom they can identify (and they prefer the protagonist to be older than they are), an adventure to make them turn the pages, and the making of a decision on the part of the protagonist.

. . .

One summer I taught a class in techniques of fiction at a midwestern university. About half way through the course, one of the students came up to me after class and said, “I do hope you’re going to teach us something about writing for children. That’s really why I’m taking this course.”

“What have I been teaching you?”

“Well—writing.”

“Don’t you write when you write for children?”

“Well—but isn’t it different?”

No, it is not different. The techniques of fiction are the techniques of fiction. They hold as true for Beatrix Potter as they do for Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Characterization, style, theme, are as important in a children’s book as in a novel for grown-ups. Taste, as always, will differ . . . A child is not likely to identify with the characters in Faulkner’s Sanctuary. Books like A Wrinkle in Time may seem too difficult to some parents. But if a book is not good enough for a grown-up, it is not good enough for a child.

So what, then, are the differences?

Most of them are minor, and apparent. A child wants to read about another child, a child living in and having adventures in a world which can be recognized and accepted. As long as what the protagonist does is true, this world can be unlimited, for a child can identify with a hero in ancient Britain, darkest Africa, or the year two thousand and ninety-three.

When I was a child I browsed through my parents’ books when I had finished my own. What was not part of my own circumference of comprehension I simply skipped; sex scenes when I was eight or nine had little relevance for me, so I skipped over them. They didn’t hurt me because they had no meaning for me. In a book which is going to be marketed for children it is usually better to write within the child’s frame of reference, but there is no subject which should, in itself, be taboo. If it is essential for the development of the child protagonist, there is nothing which may not be included. It is how it is included which makes its presence permissible or impermissible. Some books about—for instance—child abuse, are important and deeply moving; others may be little more than a form of infant porno. [Emphasis in original.]

Later in this same section, L’Engle decries the practice of “writing down” to children, which she equates with substandard writing. Then she sums up this way:

So a children’s book must be, first and foremost, a good book, a book with a young protagonist with whom the reader can identify, and a book which says yes to life. [Emphasis in original.]

Walking on Water isn’t for everyone. Madeline L’Engle was a dedicated Christian, and the book is filled with religious and philosophical concepts. However, writers with the same beliefs may want to read it for insight into L’Engle’s view of her calling.

And we can all learn from her comments on writing for children.

Viewing the World from a Child's Perspective

On Saturday I attended a writers’ conference sponsored by the Indiana Chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. The conference was held at an elementary school, and most of the chairs were too small for the adult writers who participated. Yes, we sat in them, but we also complained about how uncomfortable they were and how hard it would be for us to get out of a seat that was so low to the ground. And I was as guilty as everyone else.

After I returned home and got a good night’s rest, I realized I was looking at the situation from the wrong perspective.

Children see the world differently than adults do. Of course we know that, but we don’t always remember it. When sitting in a lower chair, I had to physically look up farther to see the presenter’s face. And for children, that physical difference is also a difference in authority. As a three-year-old peeking out from behind my grandfather Page’s chair, I knew very little of the world, while my grandparents had the wisdom of experience. Children’s writers, like parents, need to remember and understand that earlier innocence when conveying our adult wisdom. If we don’t, children won’t learn from the story.

Most of us have heard the old Native American adage that you shouldn’t judge people until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. We can’t understand someone’s actions and reactions if we haven’t gone through the same things. That applies to writing for children, too, although in a slightly different way. We’ve all been children, so we have all walked in childhood’s shoes. But how well do we remember the experience? Sitting in a child-sized chair can help.

But not entirely. When I sat in a child’s chair, I was uncomfortable because it was too small for me. Children have a different reaction. For them, it’s a perfect fit. So we can’t bring our current perspective into our stories. We must reach back to the feelings we experienced in the past.

Author Ursula K. LeGuin once said, “Sure, it’s simple writing for kids . . . Just as simple as bringing them up.”

Writing for children is simple. Just as simple as viewing the world from a child’s perspective.

And just as hard.