I’ve had a lot of kids and parents reach out to me saying that their children had never finished a book before until they read one of my books. And I actually think my secret weapon is writing in the African-American oral tradition.
When I write, I’m actually thinking of a voice that I hear. I’m actually thinking of someone telling the story. And I think there are ways in which it makes it immediate and intimate and compelling.
I also think that I have to balance that idea of ideas, keep them complex, all the things that I would write for adults: issues of race, class, gender, religious discrimination. I’m still writing them for children, just trying the appropriate way in order to tell that really substantive material for kids. And then encapsulate it in a plot, a story that makes it exciting and entertaining.
So, I think kids almost feel when they read my stories that they’re being read to, they’re being soothed, they’re not being patronized, and they’re being entertained. Which I don’t think I would have necessarily known to do all of that if I had just started out writing children’s books. So, I’m very happy.
But reluctant readers — you know, when you have a reluctant reader, say, an eighth grader who can read Ninth Ward, you know, about Hurricane Katrina. And the language is very simple, so it’s very readable, but the ideas are not. So, they feel as though they have still read a substantive, complex book.
And then in some cases you can have a third-grader who can say, “Oh, I can read this book.” And they can because the language is very simple, but they might then need the teacher to help them go deeper and deeper into the book.
So, somehow or another, I had this like big space where I can get this big audience and they can find enrichment, depending upon their grade level. But writing books particularly for older kids who are having trouble with reading that still interest them intellectually and emotionally, that’s very important. And I think my books do that.