Patricia: Writing for children is… I feel it’s as though it’s a special trust that has been given to us and that we must protect and guard it diligently; we just don’t put anything in a book for young readers.
It did not come to us easy as writers because writing for children doesn’t mean you write like a seventh grader; you write for the seventh grader and you have to think like they think, to a degree, but then you have to write like a professional who’s writing for children.
And so very often, that was one of the pitfalls that we found is that we got a little bit too chatty or, you know, it was cute, but you don’t want to be cute in a book because it will date. You can’t use too much slang…all of that. So we had to learn how to write in a professional way so that the quality of your book holds true all the way through.
I remember there was a teacher who wrote a story about the children being afraid of the monster in the computer room. And the teacher said to her — she was working on her master’s degree and she wrote about this horrible computer room.
This is when computers were relatively new. And the teacher said, “No, you’re afraid of the computer room and the monster in there; not your children. Your children don’t see it as a monster; you do.” So you’ve got to start your stories where your kids are — not where you are — but where your kids are and then you go on and tell the stories.
That’s why Walter Dean Myers is so successful. That’s why so many of our writers today who are at the top of the charts because they start where the kids are and then go from there, okay and they know where their heads are and what they’re thinking about, but that doesn’t mean they condone or whatever, but it means they start where their interest, where their interest starts.
