Avi

word craft

blog

That must be fun

The oth­er day I was hav­ing my annu­al eye check­up. Lisa, the young tech­ni­cal assis­tant was going over my basic data sheet.

LISA:  It says here you are a writer. What do you write?

AVI: Nov­els for kids.

“That must be fun,” she says and moves on to my med­ical history.

“That must be fun” is the most com­mon response folks artic­u­late upon learn­ing what I do for a liv­ing. I sus­pect it con­veys a whole range of infer­ences, such as: since your writ­ing is about kids, the work can­not be hard; that books for young peo­ple are about light­weight sub­jects; that writ­ing for young peo­ple means your life is like a young person’s life, which is to say, with­out much respon­si­bil­i­ty, ergo fun. This hap­pens, I sus­pect because what is embed­ded in adult mem­o­ry about their read­ing when young—if they did read—are books which they recall as frivolous.

At an ear­ly stage of my exis­tence, the pre­em­i­nent shared read­ing expe­ri­ence among us young, would-be writ­ers was The Catch­er in the Rye. Mov­ing along a time line, it became A Wrin­kle in Time, then The Bridge to Ter­abithia. No doubt, oth­er writ­ers can ref­er­ence oth­er titles that caught and held their emo­tion­al intel­lect enough to make them say, “I want to do that.”

Books

In short, the book which pro­vides the great­est impact is the one full of com­plex ideas, char­ac­ters, and emo­tions, a book which artic­u­lates and echoes the com­plex ideas, char­ac­ters, and emo­tions of the young read­er. There is noth­ing wrong about books that are fun. More pow­er to them. I do believe, how­ev­er, it is the hard book that opens the mind and keeps it open.

3 thoughts on “That must be fun”

  1. Your last line reminds me of some­thing I once heard Pene­lope Live­ly say: “The best chil­dren’s books are those that help free chil­dren from the prison of egotism.”

    Reply
  2. I think what you do IS indeed fun. Hard, intense work, no doubt, but there has to be an ele­ment of fun to it, or you would­n’t con­tin­ue writ­ing. I am 44 years old and tru­ly believe that chil­dren’s lit is the best lit­er­a­ture out there. My per­son­al read­ing is almost exclu­sive­ly chil­dren’s lit and I read aloud exten­sive­ly to my 5 chil­dren. We always have fun in our read­ing adven­tures togeth­er. I val­ue what you do and hope that you con­tin­ue to have fun doing it!

    As for books that I recall from my youth, things such as Madame Bovary, Lord of the Flies, Heart of Dark­ness, I say no thanks. Even as a young adult, I thought I had to read things that adults read. I did­n’t start enjoy­ing read­ing until I real­ized the trea­sure trove over in the kids’ sec­tion of the bookstore. 

    I think the respon­si­bil­i­ty of a chil­dren’s book author is a seri­ous one. You can write pif­fle, or you can help grow minds.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.