���Why don���t you write adult books?���
This week was my first NZ Book Council Writers in Schools visit. Three hour-long gigs, back to back.
Daunted? Just a bit.
It wasn���t my first experience of speaking to groups of schoolchildren, but it was the first time a school had chosen me from The List ��� a list that includes many illustrious names, the names that invite imposter syndrome. But the school librarian told me the children had voted for The Ghosts of Tarawera in the NZ Book Awards Children���s Choice, so Excitement was slugging it out with Imposter and Nerves as I donned my ghost earrings and set off through Auckland���s rush hour traffic. And whizzed straight past the turnoff I needed, then sat at the next set of traffic lights peering at my iPad trying to work out what to do about it. I managed to make it on time ��� just ��� and pretended not to be flustered. Note for next time: allow an extra 15-min getting lost time, on top of the 15-min getting lost time already allowed.
���Why am I even doing this?��� I asked myself as I then fumbled with a tangle of leads, attempting to get the photos on my iPad to appear on the TV screen at the front of the library.
Three hours later I left the school with a big smile on my face. Of course I did. And as I drove home again I reflected on why I write for children. During question time, one girl had asked, ���Why do you write children���s books and not adult books?��� As I answered, I thought, It really is time I wrote a blog post about this.
Rewind to the 1990s. There I was, in my first job in publishing. I���d been a project editor in the children���s department of Dorling Kindersley for about a year, and my managing editor was telling me she���d be fine with my moving over to Adults, if that was what I wanted. It seemed there was a vacancy I was being considered for.
There seemed to be an expectation that I would be wanting this. I was genuinely nonplussed. ���Why would I want to do that?���
With perhaps foolish disregard for future management opportunities and pay rises, I proceeded to explain why I���d rather stay in children���s. A book that is loved by a child will be picked up again and again, I said, like a favourite teddy. It���s more than the sum of its cover, pages, and words, it���s a being, a world. An adult book will more than likely be read just once (if that ��� many DK books were coffee table books and no doubt went straight from Christmas wrapping paper to shelf, with merely a crack of the spine) whereas a children���s book may be visited a hundred times or more, and if it is a favourite it will stay with that child perhaps for life, always there on the shelf, an old friend. And if it gets lost somewhere along the way, it will still hold a special place in that person���s memory.
Or words to that effect.
���Well, if you���re sure?���
���I am.���
When I was about seven or eight, Mum bought me Insects: A Little Guide in Colour (see pic). I set out to put a tick next to every wee beastie in that book. Unfortunately, neither Mum nor I noticed that this was a US edition. Heaven knows how it made it into Overs of Rugby (our much-loved local bookshop). I spent many a long hour searching for praying mantises and purple emperor butterflies, poor fool. But what hours they were, spent in the meadows with a butterfly net and a jam jar. And that book is still a dear old friend, and I smile as I look at the ticks and This is Thomas Green (name changed, you never know) written beside the stink bug illustration.
Likewise my copies of the Moomin books, the Enid Blytons, the Paddingtons, and the Noel Streatfeilds all resonate in a way a favourite adult book never could. On the shelf just here, as I write, is my battered copy of The Wind in the Willows, which Dad bought for me when I had measles. And nearby is Rosemary Manning���s Green Smoke, which sent me on dragon-hunting quests when we visited Cornwall. I read this book to my own daughter when she was six or seven, and she assumed the dragon was real, too. (You just do.) And when we visited Cornwall a few years ago, we bought a bag of buns (the dragon loves buns) and went looking for his cave. He wasn���t home, so we built a sand dragon and wrote in the sand that we���d been to visit, and had brought buns and were sorry we���d missed him.
And there you have it. Now why on earth would I want to write for adults?
Daunted? Just a bit.
It wasn���t my first experience of speaking to groups of schoolchildren, but it was the first time a school had chosen me from The List ��� a list that includes many illustrious names, the names that invite imposter syndrome. But the school librarian told me the children had voted for The Ghosts of Tarawera in the NZ Book Awards Children���s Choice, so Excitement was slugging it out with Imposter and Nerves as I donned my ghost earrings and set off through Auckland���s rush hour traffic. And whizzed straight past the turnoff I needed, then sat at the next set of traffic lights peering at my iPad trying to work out what to do about it. I managed to make it on time ��� just ��� and pretended not to be flustered. Note for next time: allow an extra 15-min getting lost time, on top of the 15-min getting lost time already allowed.
���Why am I even doing this?��� I asked myself as I then fumbled with a tangle of leads, attempting to get the photos on my iPad to appear on the TV screen at the front of the library.
Three hours later I left the school with a big smile on my face. Of course I did. And as I drove home again I reflected on why I write for children. During question time, one girl had asked, ���Why do you write children���s books and not adult books?��� As I answered, I thought, It really is time I wrote a blog post about this.
Rewind to the 1990s. There I was, in my first job in publishing. I���d been a project editor in the children���s department of Dorling Kindersley for about a year, and my managing editor was telling me she���d be fine with my moving over to Adults, if that was what I wanted. It seemed there was a vacancy I was being considered for.
There seemed to be an expectation that I would be wanting this. I was genuinely nonplussed. ���Why would I want to do that?���
With perhaps foolish disregard for future management opportunities and pay rises, I proceeded to explain why I���d rather stay in children���s. A book that is loved by a child will be picked up again and again, I said, like a favourite teddy. It���s more than the sum of its cover, pages, and words, it���s a being, a world. An adult book will more than likely be read just once (if that ��� many DK books were coffee table books and no doubt went straight from Christmas wrapping paper to shelf, with merely a crack of the spine) whereas a children���s book may be visited a hundred times or more, and if it is a favourite it will stay with that child perhaps for life, always there on the shelf, an old friend. And if it gets lost somewhere along the way, it will still hold a special place in that person���s memory.
Or words to that effect.
���Well, if you���re sure?���
���I am.���
When I was about seven or eight, Mum bought me Insects: A Little Guide in Colour (see pic). I set out to put a tick next to every wee beastie in that book. Unfortunately, neither Mum nor I noticed that this was a US edition. Heaven knows how it made it into Overs of Rugby (our much-loved local bookshop). I spent many a long hour searching for praying mantises and purple emperor butterflies, poor fool. But what hours they were, spent in the meadows with a butterfly net and a jam jar. And that book is still a dear old friend, and I smile as I look at the ticks and This is Thomas Green (name changed, you never know) written beside the stink bug illustration.
Likewise my copies of the Moomin books, the Enid Blytons, the Paddingtons, and the Noel Streatfeilds all resonate in a way a favourite adult book never could. On the shelf just here, as I write, is my battered copy of The Wind in the Willows, which Dad bought for me when I had measles. And nearby is Rosemary Manning���s Green Smoke, which sent me on dragon-hunting quests when we visited Cornwall. I read this book to my own daughter when she was six or seven, and she assumed the dragon was real, too. (You just do.) And when we visited Cornwall a few years ago, we bought a bag of buns (the dragon loves buns) and went looking for his cave. He wasn���t home, so we built a sand dragon and wrote in the sand that we���d been to visit, and had brought buns and were sorry we���d missed him.
And there you have it. Now why on earth would I want to write for adults?
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