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A Sense of Wonder: On Reading and Writing Books for Children
Anyone familiar with children's literature knows the gifted pen of award-winning Katherine Paterson. Sales of her books are in the millions, and the list of coveted awards they have garnered - including two Newbery Medals, two National Book Awards, and the Regina Medal - is remarkable.
A Sense of Wonder is a collection of more than three dozen critical essays on reading and writing for children that were originally published as two books, Gates of Excellence and The Spying Heart. Combined for the first time in one volume with a new introduction, these writings come from speeches Katherine Paterson has given all over the world, from her book reviews, and from articles she has authored on her craft. Her trademark wit, imagination, and perception are in full evidence; she reveals why she remembers being kissed by Miss Maude Henderson, the last person ever kissed by General Robert E. Lee; relates the heartbreaking source of her novel Bridge to Terabithia; and describes her dismay at failing as a foster parent to two Cambodian boys. Most of all, this extraordinary writer shares her ideas about writing for children, tells of her passion for reading, and allows us to witness her talent. Teachers, writers, students, parents, librarians - anyone who reads Katherine Paterson's essays - will come away with an expanded vision and a sense of her deep respect for words, ideas, literature, and people.
A Sense of Wonder is a collection of more than three dozen critical essays on reading and writing for children that were originally published as two books, Gates of Excellence and The Spying Heart. Combined for the first time in one volume with a new introduction, these writings come from speeches Katherine Paterson has given all over the world, from her book reviews, and from articles she has authored on her craft. Her trademark wit, imagination, and perception are in full evidence; she reveals why she remembers being kissed by Miss Maude Henderson, the last person ever kissed by General Robert E. Lee; relates the heartbreaking source of her novel Bridge to Terabithia; and describes her dismay at failing as a foster parent to two Cambodian boys. Most of all, this extraordinary writer shares her ideas about writing for children, tells of her passion for reading, and allows us to witness her talent. Teachers, writers, students, parents, librarians - anyone who reads Katherine Paterson's essays - will come away with an expanded vision and a sense of her deep respect for words, ideas, literature, and people.
336 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1995
7 people are currently reading
1014 people want to read
About the author
Katherine Paterson
164 books2,390 followersKatherine Womeldorf Paterson is an American writer best known for children's novels, including Bridge to Terabithia. For four different books published 1975–1980, she won two Newbery Medals and two National Book Awards. She is one of four people to win the two major international awards; for "lasting contribution to children's literature" she won the biennial Hans Christian Andersen Award for Writing in 1998 and for her career contribution to "children's and young adult literature in the broadest sense" she won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award from the Swedish Arts Council in 2006, the biggest monetary prize in children's literature. Also for her body of work she was awarded the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature in 2007 and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal from the American Library Association in 2013. She was the second US National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, serving 2010 and 2011.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
May 27, 2009
I've been savoring this book. Usually I read books pretty quickly, but this one wanted the slow-cooker. Paterson offers so many wonderful insights in this book. . . . If you are interested in children's literature or writing for children . . . or just like to read, give this book a look.
Okay, I'm mostly finished. This book is so wonderful, so worth the read. There is repetition of ideas and concepts, but this makes it a thorough teacher. Paterson writes from her heart and her spirit. I had to add it to my "healing" and "spirituality" bookshelves.
______________
What can I say? After I finished it, I started reading from the beginning again. What a wonderful, spiritual read.
Okay, I'm mostly finished. This book is so wonderful, so worth the read. There is repetition of ideas and concepts, but this makes it a thorough teacher. Paterson writes from her heart and her spirit. I had to add it to my "healing" and "spirituality" bookshelves.
______________
What can I say? After I finished it, I started reading from the beginning again. What a wonderful, spiritual read.
November 28, 2020
For the sake of the truth, I haven't read much by Katherine Paterson, but this collection of essays made me want to read more. I vaguely recall The Great Gilly Hopkins from childhood, and I'd probably like it more now than I did then, because her name is Galadriel Hopkins, named after the elf and Gerard Manley. A couple of years ago I read Jacob Have I Loved, and I felt so conflicted about it that I gave it only three stars, but it shines brighter in my memory. I'll definitely be digging more into her work now.
This isn't so much an essay collection as it is a collection of Paterson's non-fictional works: speeches, book reviews, personal essays, recollections. Her book reviews are short and engaging, and awakened again my love for Beverley Cleary and piqued my interest in some other writers. Paterson has lived a very interesting life, from being a missionary kid in China in the 1930s to being a TCK in the US to being a missionary in Japan to being a biological, adoptive, and foster mom to being an award-winning writer. For all this, she's not that interested in her own voice. Often she refers to the words of another to "say what [she] really mean[s]." While the passages she quotes are wonderful, it seems like she's hiding behind these other writers. The title of this book itself is borrowed from a book by Rachel Carson.
A few of the essays really had me smiling, including "Up from Elsie Dinsmore" (brilliant title!) and "Growing Up Civilized." One of them, "Sounds in the Heart," left a bad taste in my mouth. While we share the truth that "the holding of slaves is an abomination before God and that to regard any other human being as inferior to oneself is a grievous sin," Paterson believes that "The image of the saintly, larger-than-life Robert E. Lee in defeat will forever seem more magnificent to me than that of Ulysses S. What's-his-name in victory." (187) And "since 1865 we white Southerners have been suckers for a losing cause. Struggle dashed to defeat by inexorable might is somehow more glorious than mere success." (188) Um...the Lost Cause? She really said that catchphrase of the second-wave KKK? This particular essay was published in The Horn Book in 1981. Paterson lived through the Civil Rights movement, and mourned the death of MLK (see quotation from page 240 below). If she's such a sucker for a "losing cause," my dear, let me introduce you to racial injustice, not white folks angry that a tiny black girl sits next to their kids in class. While there is often glory in the losing side, I do wholeheartedly believe that what the losing side is dying for matters. And that's why I will never make use of my right to become a "daughter of the Confederacy." Thanks for coming to my TED Talk, et c.
At this point I was graciously reminded by my better angels of Alan Jacob's note that the greatest idealists do not live up to their great ideas. Paterson's strength is characterization, understanding the misunderstood. Gilly Hopkins, with her language and racism and "troubled" nature, comes to mind. Clearly, Paterson believes that slavery and superiority/inferiority between people are wrong, but on the other hand, she doesn't believe that. And that's why she can write sexist characters (as she mentions regarding a certain person in Bridge to Terabithia) and racist characters and so forth. She lives with the divide in herself, and writes so children can understand human complexity, too. I often wonder what future generations will think of the opinions I hold. What in my life will be considered backward to them? (According to Jacobs, eating animal products.) Despite, perhaps because of, some truly reprehensible opinions (that may have changed in the forty years since "Sounds in the Heart" was published), Paterson gets being human, that divide within oneself, when we all realize we are not Elsie Dinsmore and cannot sacrifice ourselves on the piano bench to the finer points of Levitical law.
Overall, this is a worthwhile book if you're a fan of Katherine Paterson/any of her books, if you like to read books about writing for children and children's literature, and if you like newsy, referential personal essays and book reviews. If you're mining Instagram captions, see the shiny repository below. This book is a bit hard to find, but hopefully you luck out at your library. My inter-library loan copy has evidence of at least three previous owners, and I hope each one--and each patron--has gotten as much enjoyment out of it as I have.
"If we prescribe books as medicine, our children have a perfect right to refuse the nasty-tasting spoon." (27)
"I believe we must try, always conscious of our own fragmentary knowledge and nature, to give our children these words. I know as you do that words can be used for evil as well as good. But we must take that risk. We must try as best we are able to give our children words that will shape their minds so they can make those miraculous leaps of imagination...those connections in science, in art, in the living of this life that will reveal the little truths." (28)
"The best people to talk about a book, then, are not writers, but readers....My philosophy of publication goes something like this: Once a book is published, it no longer belongs to me. My creative task is done. The work now belongs to the creative mind of my readers....I have no more right to tell readers how they should respond to what I have written than they had to tell me how to write it. It's a wonderful feeling when readers hear what I thought I was trying to say, but there is no law that they must. Frankly, it is even more thrilling for a reader to find something in my writing that I hadn't until that moment known was there. But this happens because of who the reader is, not simply because of who I am or what I have done." (34)
"'Don't you feel constricted writing for children?' they'll ask. William, don't you find fourteen tightly rhymed lines an absolute prison? Ah, Pablo, if you could just yank that picture off that lousy scrap of canvas! You get the point. Form is not a bar to free expression, but the boundaries within which writers and artists freely choose to work." (43) [vivid flashbacks to my college poetry professor, a formalist if there ever was one!]
[on her readers] "I cannot transmute their pain into joy, but I shall continue to try to provide a space where they can, if they wish, lay down a burden. I want them to know that despite all the evidence that the world seeks to crush them with, there is room for hope. That the good life, far from ending in childhood, barely begins there. That maturity is more to be desired than immaturity, knowledge than ignorance, understanding than confusion, perspective than self-absorption. That true innocence is not the absence of experience but the redemption of it." (62)
"A great novel is a kind of conversion experience. We come away from it changed....The fake characters we read about will evaporate like the morning dew, but the real ones, the true ones, will haunt us for the rest of our days." (69)
[on listening to Brahms's Requiem upon hearing the news of the MLK assassination, and writing historical fiction] "Art is never a quick cure, and it is not necessarily a comfort. But art is a means of seeing truth that cannot be observed directly, and historical fiction at its best gives us two routes to truth--the route, or eyeglasses, of history and the route, or spectacles, of art." (240)
"And so, as disturbed and discouraged and as near to despair as I feel when I confront the universe as it appears to me, I do not give up hope either as a person or as a writer....My primary task is not to disturb a complacent universe or decry a chaotic one. My task is to see through the disturbance to the unity so marvelously built into the Creation--to somehow find my way through the cacophany of reality to the harmony of truth." (246)
[on a dream Barth had about Mozart, in which B quizzed anti-Protestant M on theology, to which quizzing M was silent] "Perhaps in seeking to reconcile, the artist always disturbs as well. Eden is no longer our natural habitat. We can never simply go back. Even the Bible acknowledges this, for the final scene set after the end of the world does not take place in a garden but in a city. And cities are the products of judgment as much as they are the product of creativity." (254)
This isn't so much an essay collection as it is a collection of Paterson's non-fictional works: speeches, book reviews, personal essays, recollections. Her book reviews are short and engaging, and awakened again my love for Beverley Cleary and piqued my interest in some other writers. Paterson has lived a very interesting life, from being a missionary kid in China in the 1930s to being a TCK in the US to being a missionary in Japan to being a biological, adoptive, and foster mom to being an award-winning writer. For all this, she's not that interested in her own voice. Often she refers to the words of another to "say what [she] really mean[s]." While the passages she quotes are wonderful, it seems like she's hiding behind these other writers. The title of this book itself is borrowed from a book by Rachel Carson.
A few of the essays really had me smiling, including "Up from Elsie Dinsmore" (brilliant title!) and "Growing Up Civilized." One of them, "Sounds in the Heart," left a bad taste in my mouth. While we share the truth that "the holding of slaves is an abomination before God and that to regard any other human being as inferior to oneself is a grievous sin," Paterson believes that "The image of the saintly, larger-than-life Robert E. Lee in defeat will forever seem more magnificent to me than that of Ulysses S. What's-his-name in victory." (187) And "since 1865 we white Southerners have been suckers for a losing cause. Struggle dashed to defeat by inexorable might is somehow more glorious than mere success." (188) Um...the Lost Cause? She really said that catchphrase of the second-wave KKK? This particular essay was published in The Horn Book in 1981. Paterson lived through the Civil Rights movement, and mourned the death of MLK (see quotation from page 240 below). If she's such a sucker for a "losing cause," my dear, let me introduce you to racial injustice, not white folks angry that a tiny black girl sits next to their kids in class. While there is often glory in the losing side, I do wholeheartedly believe that what the losing side is dying for matters. And that's why I will never make use of my right to become a "daughter of the Confederacy." Thanks for coming to my TED Talk, et c.
At this point I was graciously reminded by my better angels of Alan Jacob's note that the greatest idealists do not live up to their great ideas. Paterson's strength is characterization, understanding the misunderstood. Gilly Hopkins, with her language and racism and "troubled" nature, comes to mind. Clearly, Paterson believes that slavery and superiority/inferiority between people are wrong, but on the other hand, she doesn't believe that. And that's why she can write sexist characters (as she mentions regarding a certain person in Bridge to Terabithia) and racist characters and so forth. She lives with the divide in herself, and writes so children can understand human complexity, too. I often wonder what future generations will think of the opinions I hold. What in my life will be considered backward to them? (According to Jacobs, eating animal products.) Despite, perhaps because of, some truly reprehensible opinions (that may have changed in the forty years since "Sounds in the Heart" was published), Paterson gets being human, that divide within oneself, when we all realize we are not Elsie Dinsmore and cannot sacrifice ourselves on the piano bench to the finer points of Levitical law.
Overall, this is a worthwhile book if you're a fan of Katherine Paterson/any of her books, if you like to read books about writing for children and children's literature, and if you like newsy, referential personal essays and book reviews. If you're mining Instagram captions, see the shiny repository below. This book is a bit hard to find, but hopefully you luck out at your library. My inter-library loan copy has evidence of at least three previous owners, and I hope each one--and each patron--has gotten as much enjoyment out of it as I have.
"If we prescribe books as medicine, our children have a perfect right to refuse the nasty-tasting spoon." (27)
"I believe we must try, always conscious of our own fragmentary knowledge and nature, to give our children these words. I know as you do that words can be used for evil as well as good. But we must take that risk. We must try as best we are able to give our children words that will shape their minds so they can make those miraculous leaps of imagination...those connections in science, in art, in the living of this life that will reveal the little truths." (28)
"The best people to talk about a book, then, are not writers, but readers....My philosophy of publication goes something like this: Once a book is published, it no longer belongs to me. My creative task is done. The work now belongs to the creative mind of my readers....I have no more right to tell readers how they should respond to what I have written than they had to tell me how to write it. It's a wonderful feeling when readers hear what I thought I was trying to say, but there is no law that they must. Frankly, it is even more thrilling for a reader to find something in my writing that I hadn't until that moment known was there. But this happens because of who the reader is, not simply because of who I am or what I have done." (34)
"'Don't you feel constricted writing for children?' they'll ask. William, don't you find fourteen tightly rhymed lines an absolute prison? Ah, Pablo, if you could just yank that picture off that lousy scrap of canvas! You get the point. Form is not a bar to free expression, but the boundaries within which writers and artists freely choose to work." (43) [vivid flashbacks to my college poetry professor, a formalist if there ever was one!]
[on her readers] "I cannot transmute their pain into joy, but I shall continue to try to provide a space where they can, if they wish, lay down a burden. I want them to know that despite all the evidence that the world seeks to crush them with, there is room for hope. That the good life, far from ending in childhood, barely begins there. That maturity is more to be desired than immaturity, knowledge than ignorance, understanding than confusion, perspective than self-absorption. That true innocence is not the absence of experience but the redemption of it." (62)
"A great novel is a kind of conversion experience. We come away from it changed....The fake characters we read about will evaporate like the morning dew, but the real ones, the true ones, will haunt us for the rest of our days." (69)
[on listening to Brahms's Requiem upon hearing the news of the MLK assassination, and writing historical fiction] "Art is never a quick cure, and it is not necessarily a comfort. But art is a means of seeing truth that cannot be observed directly, and historical fiction at its best gives us two routes to truth--the route, or eyeglasses, of history and the route, or spectacles, of art." (240)
"And so, as disturbed and discouraged and as near to despair as I feel when I confront the universe as it appears to me, I do not give up hope either as a person or as a writer....My primary task is not to disturb a complacent universe or decry a chaotic one. My task is to see through the disturbance to the unity so marvelously built into the Creation--to somehow find my way through the cacophany of reality to the harmony of truth." (246)
[on a dream Barth had about Mozart, in which B quizzed anti-Protestant M on theology, to which quizzing M was silent] "Perhaps in seeking to reconcile, the artist always disturbs as well. Eden is no longer our natural habitat. We can never simply go back. Even the Bible acknowledges this, for the final scene set after the end of the world does not take place in a garden but in a city. And cities are the products of judgment as much as they are the product of creativity." (254)
April 6, 2018
More beautiful, truthful and insightful essays and speeches about reading and writing for children. I just can’t even. Katherine Paterson is amazing in writing for our kids and always writing a story with such hope. Once again flagged so many quotes. Also added bonus of hilirious and well written book review she did for the Post...added a ton of new books to read plus mourned over the fact that no writes a book review like Katherine Paterson anymore. A good collection to any lover of books.
June 12, 2018
“It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading. Something that will stretch their imaginations—something that will help them make sense of their own lives and encourage them to reach out toward people whose lives are quite different from their own.”
May 15, 2018
The book is comprised of many excellent five star worthy chapters, and some lesser quality - mainly those that are book reviews that seem to be included as filler material, books that unfortunately haven't stood the test of time and are now, 30 years later, out of print. Katherine's reasons for writing, her thoughts on her own books, and the importance of story and imagination for all ages were some of my favorite themes of the book. I wish I had known her books as a teenager, but I likely would have been at that time like many who had written to her complaining of the language. I'm glad to be getting aquainted with her body of work now.
July 31, 2007
Her National Book Award and Newbery Medal speeches, plus dozens of other beautifully crafted essays that will make you run to the page to write.
June 16, 2017
A beautiful book. Coffee over cake with an old friend. Genuine advice from someone you trust.
January 9, 2018
A delicious collection of essays, speeches, and book reviews by acclaimed author Katherine Paterson. Highly recommended for educators, parents, and children’s authors.
April 6, 2018
A must have and a must read. Validated my role as mother and educator. I copied so many quotes from this book!
March 30, 2021
Probably the very best thing I've read so far this year! So, so good.
Katherine Paterson's books were among my most treasured as a child. Even at a young age - it was apparent that this author understood kids and respected them. Respected them enough not to talk down to them or avoid difficult topics. And her books often dealt with difficult topics.
It was so refreshing to read her thoughts and opinions on reading and writing for children (and she gives her thoughts about so, so much more as well - and it's so good). As an adult, I now know how very much she not only respects children but dearly loves them. It's quite a revelation to find out that one of your most beloved childhood authors is a kindred spirit.
I'm so glad that I purchased this title, as I will definitely be reading it again and again...
But first I need to revisit these childhood treasures such as Bridge to Terabithia, The Great Gilly Hopkins, Jacob Have I Loved. It's been a few decades since my last visit and I'm overdue.
Katherine Paterson's books were among my most treasured as a child. Even at a young age - it was apparent that this author understood kids and respected them. Respected them enough not to talk down to them or avoid difficult topics. And her books often dealt with difficult topics.
It was so refreshing to read her thoughts and opinions on reading and writing for children (and she gives her thoughts about so, so much more as well - and it's so good). As an adult, I now know how very much she not only respects children but dearly loves them. It's quite a revelation to find out that one of your most beloved childhood authors is a kindred spirit.
I'm so glad that I purchased this title, as I will definitely be reading it again and again...
But first I need to revisit these childhood treasures such as Bridge to Terabithia, The Great Gilly Hopkins, Jacob Have I Loved. It's been a few decades since my last visit and I'm overdue.
January 31, 2023
A Sense of Wonder: On Reading and Writing Books for Children by Katherine Paterson is the first book on writing I read and it's a wonderful read. The more than three dozen essays on reading and writing are personal and full of humour. This is a great book not only for writing for children but for any age! The only critique I have is that there is no context to when or in which context the essays were written.
Highly recommended!
Highly recommended!
August 9, 2023
I've always like Katherine Paterson's writing, and this book, a collection of essays, speeches, and reviews from a span of twenty-some years, is marvelous. She gets people, and she's so genuine herself. I'd forgotten, too, that she lived in China as a child, and Japan as a young adult, and had to transition back to the States. Her understanding of being a third-culture-kid, with all the confusion and beauty it brings, was something I related to deeply.
June 13, 2019
I picked this up after it was recommended on the Read-Aloud Revival podcast (episode 121)
A collection of essays on reading and writing for children, this book is just wonderful to read and think further into why this particular author writes the things she does, and her ideas about writing for children and her passion for reading. I really enjoyed it!
A collection of essays on reading and writing for children, this book is just wonderful to read and think further into why this particular author writes the things she does, and her ideas about writing for children and her passion for reading. I really enjoyed it!
December 10, 2020
Great book if you're a fan of the author and her works. It gave me a better understanding why she wrote ,how she went about it and how she thought and felt about writing for children. She also mentions many books that shaped her as well as informative books, which I jotted down to read later.
November 18, 2021
I wanted to love this book SO bad, but alas.
Some of Paterson's insights really shine and leave you with a feeling of clarity and hope. But I don't foresee myself referencing this book much in the future or rereading it.
Some of Paterson's insights really shine and leave you with a feeling of clarity and hope. But I don't foresee myself referencing this book much in the future or rereading it.
October 11, 2024
So beautiful, spiritual, full of imagery and love for nature. The only negative thing about it is that I wish there was more. Rest in peace Rachael Carson, may your love of nature be only heightened where ever you may be now.
January 3, 2021
So, so much food for thought here.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews