What kids literature is for
Hopeful children's book authors often ask me how to write for kids. This is my answer.
“Most of us know what we should expect to find in a dragon's lair, but, as I said before, Eustace had read only the wrong books. They had a lot to say about exports and imports and governments and drains, but they were weak on dragons.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
I love talking about kids books. I teach a community college course on writing them, and am a frequent speaker on the topic for writing groups, libraries and author events. I’ve learned a lot before, during and since writing Buzz the Not-So-Brave about what kids read, what they like, and why certain books work and others don’t.
That said, every time I teach on writing for kids, I am struck by how few adults remember childhood with any vibrancy.
It seems that few of us have thought about why we loved certain stories in childhood. We don’t seem to recall the flights of fancy we took as kids, how our backyard was a kingdom and our bed a fortress, how we believed the neighborhood creek was a river to ford or a sea to cross. We haven’t asked ourselves why we read The Black Stallion or The Island of the Blue Dolphins over and over.
I recently read Pinocchio, the classic 1882 novel, better known by most as the Disney movie and attraction. What strikes me about every version of Pinocchio is that, yes, it is a morality tale, but unlike our modern takes, which are chock-full of tolerance and therapeutic language, it is ridiculous, imaginative, riotous. My seven-year-old kicked his feet with delight when Pinocchio gets taken in by the conniving fox and cat, convinced to bury his money in a (not actually magical) field instead of taking it home to his father.
“Don't trust to those who promise to make you rich in a day. Usually they are either mad or rogues!” -Pinocchio
Like all fairy tales, it illustrates light and dark, good and evil, free will and its consequent failure, and it doesn’t shield kids from the terror of said mistakes. Pinocchio is satire and silliness and selfish people coming to bad ends because of their own choices. You’re meant to read about the foolish young men pursuing pleasure and ego to its final end with a giggle and a shiver. By the time the boys become donkeys, every little boy who hears the story is supposed to get wide-eyed, then laugh, then, of course, hug his mother and do his chores. (Hear that, son?)
Laughter and fear both keep us honest, take our guard down. They are memorable emotions. Pinocchio is a ridiculous puppet, taken in by every whim he has and scoundrel he meets, but the whole story is laden with humor and vibrancy, and yes, even compassion. We feel sorry for Pinocchio despite his faults, and we want him to do better. It’s supposed to be a romp, ridiculous and silly and sad, like a parade route the day after, strewn with empty popcorn containers and popped balloons. We’re supposed to watch Pinocchio repeatedly break his father’s heart, get fooled by con artists and whipped by the winds of his own selfishness, and chuckle at him and his poor puppet brain, and wish it wasn’t so.
But it seems to me that most children’s authors now think that kids can’t possibly understand satire or allegory, that we have lay everything out in black and white. Jiminy Cricket (or Talking-Cricket in the novel) is not clear enough for our modern, overstimulated brains.
“My books help kids handle tough situations,” said the earnest debut author behind a “new author” table. Her books dealt with dementia, death and unstable adults, illustrated in the overly sketched style so common in kids’ books.
“My mom told me she is moving somewhere else,” says the text beside to a pencil-line outline of a child’s confused face. “But I’m staying with Dad.”
This new author and I chatted for a while about her books, about how much we both like writing for and reading to kids. But she confided that her books haven’t sold as well as she hoped. While I hated to tell her this, I think some of it could be the lack of Pinocchio energy. There is no surprise here, no imagination, no adventure.
In all honesty, I can’t imagine a child who wants to read very serious stories like these, even one who has lived through the trauma of divorce or death. But adults certainly want to write it for kids, and purchase it for them, the literature version of an itchy hand-knit sweater from Aunt Mildred at Christmas.
“Grandpa doesn’t remember things anymore. He has dementia,” reads another kids book I thumbed through at one of the conferences I attend. In this painfully earnest story, a little girl sits with her ailing grandfather and shows him art and takes him for a walk, all in lisping, serious prose.
I know these authors mean well, as does every bookstore owner who stocks these books and educator who promotes them. Talking about the challenges of real life is a valuable enterprise, but I would argue that these are self-help books disguised as kids literature, and don’t we have quite enough of that?
Nothing against self-help. Well, OK, maybe something against self-help.
Hear me out.
In my view, self-help books are the product of an illiterate age and a fast-paced society. We have forgotten how to take lessons from experience and storytelling and mythology, and so we look to listicles instead.
We eagerly devour every wanna-be guru’s '“optimize your life” book because we have forgotten who we are. We were put on this planet to eat well and love well and adventure well and tell stories of those things. We are a people of narrative, not body-hacks and productivity spreadsheets. But we have lost the art of telling those stories. We have tuned out from the stories that might make us better.
Instead, we push ourselves to the limits of possibility, a constant strive toward more and more accomplishment. But as we climb, we burn the guiding narratives we used to hold dear. We’d rather have “lived experience” instead of mere stories, and so have lost a guiding light to help us succeed or overcome. No wonder we are burning out and coming unglued at an alarming rate.
Charles Dickens never wrote a self-help book. But if you read his heroes you will learn about good-humor and hope and perseverance, about how to remain cheerful in the midst of hardship, about what it looks like to quietly and bravely resist the machines of injustice. Jane Austen never wrote a self-help book; but her characters teach us a great deal more about how to handle difficult relatives, nosy neighbors and constraining, unfair social norms than any Instagram therapist ever could. The Ancient Greek, Roman, pan-Asian and African mythologies I studied in college can teach us much about morality, perseverance and hope; every one calls us to examine our motivations, live in right relationship with others and look wisely to both our legacies and our futures. These are the stories we have told each other around hearths and campfires for many centuries. They make us better, they give us structure and depth. They translate an often terrifying world, yes by telling truths about how it is, but more importantly, but how it could be.
Literature should give us new windows to the world, it should inspire and embolden, warn us and make us wary, call us to account and demand that we pay attention. It should not simply tell us what we want to hear (You Are a Badass, anyone?)
Now, I want to be careful here, because I am not saying that you can’t tell a story with a moral, or a point of view, or even a lesson in mind. Lord knows, every author has a question that they write to answer, and children’s literature can and should wrestle with those big themes. For my own part, I wrote Buzz the Not-So-Brave because I wanted a story that taught kids about courage and compassion, yes, but I also wanted to offer them a horsey-horse, a horse who behaved, thought and reacted like a horse, not like a person in a horse body. This really mattered to me as I wrote it - it’s hard to teach kids about how horses think if your main character doesn’t embody this quality.
But, for my book to work, kids had to want to read it. So it had to be funny and quirky and surprising above all. Not to toot our own horn, but I think Kristin and I accomplished that (and if you want to see for yourself, you can buy it here). This is what good kids literature does: it teaches sneakily.
We are reading The Wind in the Willows to the kids right now, and they love the rollicking adventures of Rat and Mole, the steady quiet of Badger and the ridiculous vanity and selfishness of Toad. It’s a silly story about small animals, who happen to have boats and cars and houses and dreams. It’s a book about taking care of your friends, about seeing the world as a place of possibility, of living life with gusto but not foolishness, about being responsible for oneself.
“The moon, serene and detached in a cloudless sky, did what she could, though so far off, to help them in their quest; till her hour came and she sank earthwards reluctantly, and left them, and mystery once more held field and river.” - The Wind in the Willows
My kids love it: the moon as their friend, the friendly river as a guide, silly Mr Toad as a hilarious cautionary tale.
They are captivated by stories of defeating the White Witch or rescuing a stallion who becomes their dearest friend or setting sail on a ship that turns out mid-voyage to be run by a band of nefarious pirates.
By contrast, kids generally walk right past a book designed to outright discuss bullying or divorce or death; even as the grown-ups in their lives flip through them with hmmmms of appreciation and understanding. Grown-ups know that kids will face sad and scary things. As the adults, we’re facing a multitude right now. But we misunderstand how to prepare our kids for those things. We forget that courage and kindness are learned along the way, that we remember stories far better than platitudes.
Last summer, I tried to chat with my then-6-year-old son, intending to take rare one-on-one time to have a serious conversation about his birth mother. It’s not new information to him, but kids forget things and it was on my heart. I wanted him to know that if he had questions I would answer, that I know this story might be hard to handle sometimes.
“Sometimes people make bad choices, or get in trouble with the police, but it doesn’t make them bad people,” I explained, trying to offer a first-grade-friendly explanation of his birth story. “If you want to know more, I will answer any questions you have.”
We talked as we swam in the pool, a last gasp of summertime sun hitting our browned shoulders. He put his little bony knees on my chest and looked seriously into my eyes. “But you’re my mom,” he interrupted me.
“Yes baby,” I found myself choking up. “I will always be your mom.” I started to explain again the story he already knows, the one about different bellies and different lives and love that always overcomes. In that moment I will admit that my boring grown-up brain would have loved to rely on a sanitized picture book - wouldn’t this be easier if a serious, disembodied voice explained birth trauma through soft pastel images?
He stopped me. “But mom,” he said seriously. “Who would win – a pirate ship or a submarine?”
I have to admit I was quite proud.
Like Edmund and Lucy, he has read the right books, books about pirates and dragons. When he grows into adulthood he will have plenty of time to wrestle with the realities of sorrow and suffering, bad decisions and bad luck. He will, I’m sure, ask the pertinent questions in time. But right now he needs stories that teach him those things in an imaginative, childlike way. Kids are not tiny adults, and, with rare exceptions, they don’t love talk therapy. Who wants to read about realistic relational traumas when there are such epics in the world as Treasure Island and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea?
My son needs to hear that he has the strength to steer whatever sailing vessel he wants, that he is strong enough to defeat bad guys, that he has courage to sally forth through enchanted wardrobes and set sail on high seas. He needs to be reminded: he knows how to make good decisions, unlike poor Pinocchio, that he can be both adventurous and compassionate, like Rat and Mole.
This is how we build resilient, big-dreaming and big-hoping kids; by telling them the big, beautiful stories, the ones of David and Goliath, of boys and rocks and giants and courage. Stories of how good overcomes in the end.
As G.K. Chesterton wrote: “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
Such a powerful message! 👏🏻👏🏻❤️❤️
I loved this Dani!