I’m interrupting the series I’ve been posting, a series asking why grown-up writers choose children as our audience, to take on another topic.  A topic that has, just now, thrust itself into the news.

Guest Blog by Judi Logan

Writing for children was never a conscious intention or goal. I’d been writing for as long as I could hold a pencil, bleeding my secret thoughts into diaries and journals since I was maybe 8 years old.

I’ve asked other children’s writers to weigh in with their own reasons for choosing to write for young readers.  My first response is from Jane Buchanan, author of picture books, novels, and nonfiction. 

We human beings need stories.  In every culture, stories teach and heal.

Will those of you reading this who write for children send me a few words or an essay through the Contact link on my website?  Tell me what has prompted you to choose children and young adults as your audience. 

My parents were English to the bone.  While they didn’t agree about many basics, there was one value so imbedded in both that it seldom needed words. 

Feelings are not quite nice!

Lately I’ve been responding to a question no one has asked.  Or at least a question no one has asked for a long time.  It’s one I encountered often, though, when I was out in the world supporting my books.  The question . . . why did I choose to write for children? 

When my mother was a baby, she nearly died of whooping cough. 

It’s a question I was asked many times when I was out in the world supporting my books.  Why do you write for children? 

I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success

Every single day I give thanks for the multiple kinds of serendipity that gave me my career. 

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin

I began this blog in 2012 at the request of an editor.  She wanted me to write about my just-published novel in verse, Little Dog Lost.

The genius for happiness is still so rare, is indeed on the whole the rarest genius

Love the animals, love the plants, love everything

Your opponent, in the end, is never really the player on the other side of the net

The moment I have defined another being as my enemy, I lose part of myself, the complexity and subtlety of my vision.

I don’t believe that life is supposed to make you feel good

I can be angry. I can hate. I can rage.

The extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation.

Since a love of life may ultimately be all that we have