Ask the Author: Elspeth Rae
Answered Questions (5)
Elspeth Rae
We got the inspiration to write Meg and Greg: A Duck in a Sock from Elspeth’s experience working with children learning to read at an older-than-average age due to struggles with dyslexia or other learning-language difficulties. These kids are bright and interested in all the same things as their friends at school, but they aren’t able to read the same books. They are at an early stage of learning to read so they need stories at a Kindergarten or Grade 1 level, but the students Elspeth teaches are in Grades 2, 3 or 4 so these younger-age books are “babyish.” Being given a “baby book” when your peers are reading more advanced chapter books is super demoralizing, not to mention boring.
When Elspeth searched but couldn’t find the right books for her students, we got the idea to write the stories ourselves using two levels of text—one for the student to read and one for a more advanced reader. This way, the stories can move at a good pace and be interesting, but the student’s portion is still at a basic reading level. We also found that many books for beginner readers include very difficult words that stump a struggling student.
So, our Meg and Greg stories are carefully controlled so they don’t include any really tricky words in the student text.
When Elspeth searched but couldn’t find the right books for her students, we got the idea to write the stories ourselves using two levels of text—one for the student to read and one for a more advanced reader. This way, the stories can move at a good pace and be interesting, but the student’s portion is still at a basic reading level. We also found that many books for beginner readers include very difficult words that stump a struggling student.
So, our Meg and Greg stories are carefully controlled so they don’t include any really tricky words in the student text.
Elspeth Rae
We decide which letter-sound combination to focus on for a story, look at all the words with that combo, and choose a few good nouns. Then we start brainstorming a story together. Once we have a story outline, one of us takes the lead to write it, and then we work together on the phone and with real-time file-sharing to revise the story. It sometimes takes us weeks or even months to write one 1500-word story!
Often the stories are based on our own experiences. A roommate of Rowena’s really did lose a fish down a drain once (but she got it back), and Elspeth really did visit a ranch that had been evacuated only days before due to a wildfire.
Often the stories are based on our own experiences. A roommate of Rowena’s really did lose a fish down a drain once (but she got it back), and Elspeth really did visit a ranch that had been evacuated only days before due to a wildfire.
Elspeth Rae
Book 2 in the Meg and Greg series. It will contain stories focusing on the following letter-combinations: ng, nk, tch, dge.
Elspeth Rae
It’s fun writing these stories together as sisters. One of the best parts is thinking up silly details, like when Meg and Greg end up using a dog poop bag to hold their fish (don’t worry, it was a clean bag!). It’s also very rewarding to hear from kids who enjoyed our stories and had perhaps not previously found an interesting book at their level.
Elspeth Rae
We haven’t really suffered from writer’s block yet, but we do have a slightly different problem. We frequently are trying to write something or describe a situation in our stories and the only words we can think of are ones we aren’t “allowed” to use in our tightly controlled student text. Try describing how a sloth climbed out the window without actually using the word window; very tricky! Or making a phone call to a wildfire hotline without using the words wild, fire, or phone; again, very tricky.
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