You Have to Write

by Janet S. Wong

You have to write! It's a class assignment. But you have nothing to write about. All the other kids seem to have something to tell because they start in right away. What can you do? Stop and think. No one else can tell your stories -- about your family, your dog or cat. No one else can tell how it was when your library book got soaked in the rain.
But what if you don't like what you write? There are all sorts of ways to change it, to make it better. Keep on playing with your words, putting them together in different ways. You want whatever you write to be good. It will get better and better as you work on it.
This is an encouraging book, sympathetically illustrated by Teresa Flavin's charming pictures, for all young readers who worry when they're told to write something.

Genres: Picture Books, Poetry, Writing, Childrens, Teaching, Nonfiction, Asian American

40 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2002

About the author

Janet S. Wong was born in Los Angeles, and grew up in Southern and Northern California. As part of her undergraduate program at UCLA, she spent her junior year in France, studying art history at the Université de Bordeaux. When she returned from France, Janet founded the UCLA Immigrant Children's Art Project, a program focused on teaching refugee children to express themselves through art.

After graduating from UCLA, summa cum laude, with a B.A. in History and College Honors, Janet then obtained her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was a director of the Yale Law and Technology Association and worked for New Haven Legal Aid. After practicing corporate and labor law for a few years for GTE and Universal Studios Hollywood, she made a dramatic career change—choosing to write for young people instead. Her successful switch from law to children’s literature has been the subject of several articles and television programs, most notably an O Magazine article, a "Remembering Your Spirit" segment on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," and the Fine Living Channel’s "Radical Sabbatical."

Janet's poems and stories have been featured in many textbooks and anthologies, and also in some more unusual venues. Poems from Behind the Wheel have been performed on a car-talk radio show. "Albert J. Bell" from A Suitcase of Seaweed was selected to appear on 5,000 subway and bus posters as part of the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority's "Poetry in Motion" program, and was later highlighted on the Hallmark Channel’s "New Morning" show. And, in April 2003, Janet was one of five children’s authors invited to read at The White House Easter Egg Roll.

Janet and her books have received numerous awards and honors, such as the International Reading Association's "Celebrate Literacy Award" for exemplary service in the promotion of literacy, and the prestigious Stone Center Recognition of Merit, given by the Claremont Graduate School. Janet also has been appointed to two terms on the Commission on Literature of the National Council of Teachers of English.

Janet currently resides near Princeton, NJ, with her husband Glenn and her son Andrew.

Reviews

[Chloe Peek · Rating 4 out of 5]

What happens if you stop caring about what others think and just write and write? You Have to Write by Janet S. Wong encourages people to keep writing, improving, and trying a poem written in verse. Another theme of this book is that our unique and not always fun experiences make us who we are. The illustrations in this picture book, along with the beautiful and relevant endpaper design, convey emotions and feelings that occur in the writing process. The illustrations also show diverse characters going through vulnerable experiences that many children will relate to. This book is great for kids and adults who are struggling with motivation to write and feeling envious of other’s life experiences!

[Rian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary: This is a picture book poem written to encourage children to embrace the writing process, even when they feel they don't know what to say. It celebrates the importance of writing about small, everyday moments and experiences.

Response: I started reading this fairly casually, in a mode of "reading to complete an assignment," but as I went along, I was completely taken in by the perfectly natural, almost conversational flow of Janet Wong's poetry. She captures the feelings a writer has and the way a writer's thoughts can run as they sit confronted by the empty page; I particularly liked when she wrote how other kids have fancy houses or take vacations to France, and the illustrations show a classroom full of kids with their thoughts in thought clouds above their heads. I also like how, as Wong moves along in her suggestions of what to write about, she slips in a "sample poem" of what a poem about a library book or taking out the garbage might sound like. Wong's poetry sounds so accessible and natural, that not only does the content of the poem encourage kid writers, but her form makes poetry not sound too intimidating.
As a teacher, I would use this at the beginning of a discussion about a writing unit or a poetry-writing unit. It is also a case of a culturally neutral book, where the author's audience is all children and the illustrations reflect that message.

POETRY

[A'Niye Hyde · Rating 5 out of 5]

You Have To Write is a poetic picture book by Janet S. Wong and illustrated by Teresa Flavin. The theme is to encourage young children to find their voice and express their personal stories or ideas through writing. From this viewpoint, it is also obvious to see that the author writes the book to persuade. On the copyright page, it includes that the media used for the illustrations are rendered in gouache on paper. Through free-verse poetry, Wong explores the challenges and joys of writing while also guiding readers to draw from their own experiences, emotions, and dreams. The book also advocates that everyone has something important to say, even if finding the right words is difficult. My favorite double-spread illustration is on pages three and four. It pictures five students all sitting at their desks and stuck on writing assignments. You can see them daydreaming yet every thought is different from one another. I love this and think it’s important. It shows how the possibilities for writing are endless because everyone has different minds and is creative. The next pages, five and six promote another double-spread illustration that feeds onto the same idea. Instead, it shows over twenty different kids doing twenty different activities in their everyday lives. Each child is engaged in something different. Some are playing sports, others are painting or reading, and a few are exploring nature. This implicates the diversity of experiences that shape individual voices and perspectives in writing. This illustration can help readers appreciate how their daily activities and interests get their creative juices flowing! This adds to the message that Wong wanted to reinforce that every child has their own story to tell, inspired by their distinct experiences. Overall this is a very good book that I hope to read to my children each year in the beginning. I hope to incorporate journaling into all of my classrooms and this will be a perfect way to get students excited and motivated for it.

[Makenna Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

You Have to Write is a poetic picture book. The author is Janet S. Wong and the illustrated is Teresa Flavin. You Have to Write is based around the idea of younger children being encouraged to find out who they truly are as people, and your voice to express that to others. Since the theme of the book is to be your own kind of beautiful, it’s written from a point of view to try and persuade you to not let others tell you who you can and can’t be. The illustrations in the book are realistic and relatable to younger people. There are pictures of children doing activities, kids in school, and different emotions illustrated on the pages. I think this book is incredibly important for anyone to read. As an audience it allows everyone to see the point of view of younger children and how their brain works. As a future educator, I hope this book is a safe book in my classroom for students to read.

[Tiffany Long]

“You have to write” is a poem and the author is Janet Wong, illustrated by Teresa Flavin. The plot of the book is that students have to write. The book goes on to talk about all the different things you could possibly write about and how you want it to be good so everyone either cries or laughs real hard. The author talks about if you don’t tell your stories then who will? Who will know what you have seen or been through or even what you desire? The concept of the book is to try and write, even if it is something as small as what you did yesterday. There is no real characterization, they’re drawings of characters but not in the poem itself. I would consider this book having a circular plot, the book starts off having to write and continuities until the end.

[Sydney Horton]

Do you write?

Writing is a great way to organize one's thoughts and opinions. In the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children winning author, Janet Wong's poetry book she gives several ideas to write about. The informal arrangement makes the reading and poetry a little more fun and easier to grasp the idea of how it is meant to be read. The illustrations are very interesting to look at because they are rendered in gouache on paper. The fly papers and endpapers also have cute and fun designs on them. Overall the read was great and the illustrations were interesting. This would be a great book for fluent readers.

[Mackenzie Mattsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

You Have To Write is a poem showing how to write. The author talks about telling your story and how important that is. The plot of this book teaching kids how to write, even if it's small. This is a perfect classroom read aloud book!

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This would be a great thing to include in a writing class or workshop, for people of any age.

[Abbey Link · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book for writing but was not my favorite.

[Read Ribbet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wong uses verse to motivate young students to write. Her book argues for a sense of urgency in young writers and provides inspiration and practical tips on how to get and keep the writing process started. It would be a great addition to a writing workshop classroom to use in mni-lessons on the steps of the writing process.

[Brittany Dalziel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Personal Reaction: I thought that this book was very fun and entertaining. I loved the rhyming and the interesting way that the author teaches children to not worry about what they have to what or be stumped on not knowing what they have to write about throughout the poem. The author also puts in, almost as a side story that doesn't actually rhyme with the rest of the poem, examples of poems to possibly write about. For example, in the story it says "back to when you were six, and five, and four, and three, scared of the wind in the trees" and then continues with a poem about a child being scared of the wind being so strong that it breaks the tree.

Purpose: The purpose of this story is to be read aloud to first or second graders for enrichment and curricular reasons. Children can start gaining an appreciation for poetry in this entertaining, catchy, and easy to grasp poem while also being exposed to a different style of writing that they most likely aren't too knowledgeable of yet. This story helps build the framework for poetry for young children in a fun way. For the curricular purpose, this book would be great to be read aloud before a writing assignment, especially if it is read at the beginning of the school year if a teacher plans on having their students write in a journal weekly. The story gives lots of ideas on what to write about and teaches children to not be worried about being stumped and not knowing to write about; the main idea that the book teaches is for children to just write about anything.

[Anna Korroch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Personal response
I thought that this book was a great poem that perfectly describes the frustration of the writing process for many children. Sometimes, the hardest part about writing is just figuring out where to start or what to write about. I think that this poem does a great job at explaining that writing is really about expressing your feeling and what you have seen, you can write about anything. I like that this book is one big poem with little poems inside of it that act as examples of students writings. The bright colors helps make writing look exciting and not as bad as it may seem to some students

Purpose
This would be a great read aloud book for grades 1-4. It could be used at the being of a unit on writing or poetry. It could be read to students in order to inspire them and give them ideas for a writing assignment that they have. I think that students will really appreciate how much they can relate to the book and it will help relieve the stress and anxiety that can come along with writing. It uses strong vocabulary such as " ripple," "draft," and "downright." It also uses repetition "all right, all right, all right."

[Kelly]

This is a great book for teachers to use to introduce writing into their classroom especially when the topic is wide open for students to choose. It shows that everyday things can be turned into good writing and everyone really does have something to write about. I think the title is a bad idea - it makes it sound forceful and like you don't have a choice or writing is bad - but the story is good. It even gives a couple tips for editing.

[Salsabrarian]

A poem about the process of writing and being inspired to white about what's around you, personal experiences, the everyday, the good and bad. Nicely addresses the obstacles of not having anything to write about, thinking one's life isn't that interesting, and the importance of drafts and rewrites. Multicultural illustrations.

[Amy Brown (amylikestoreadalot) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book to use when teaching writing! My class and I really liked it. It gave us lots of good ideas for writing.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

a must read before beginning to write at the start of the year

[Rani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent introduction to writing for students from start to finish!