Stacy Overby asked Heidi Angell:

How do you balance writing current ideas/events/themes in children's books with all of the concern about age appropriateness for these themes/ideas/etc.?

Heidi Angell Well, I only have two children's books and neither deal with heavy current events/ themes. Royal Prince Vince is a moral tale about how wealth doesn't buy happiness, but self-esteem built around learning skills and applying them can lead to fulfillment. I suppose if someone wanted to, they could turn that into a heavy theme, but it wasn't intended that way. It was just a fun story. Creative Exercises to Inspire is simply a series of creative tasks that I used with kids age 5-16 to help inspire their creativity during a summer program I volunteered for. But I think that authors who are concerned about such things should take some psychology courses geared around the developmental stages for the age group they are aiming to teach.

I know for me, even though my own children are advanced readers vocabularily, I've always been very careful about choosing books that were content appropriate. When my 5th grader went behind my back and checked out Hunger Games from the school library, and came back with the concept that it would be cool to be a Tribute, I felt completely justified in my decision.

Just because a person can read the words, doesn't mean they have the wherewithal to cope with the concepts and understanding how brain development works is vital to creating appropriate stories that don't deal with too difficult themes.

flag