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.  Jane is a graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults, a program for which I was one of the founding faculty and the first Faculty Chair. 

In our post-VCFA years, Jane and I and Debby Dahl Edwardson founded the powerful if short-lived LoonSong, a northern Minnesota conference and retreat for children’s writers.  (We were brought up short by Covid, also by the fact that such lofty projects seldom pay their own way, even when they are received with great enthusiasm as LoonSong was.)

The three of us live far from one another—Debby, in Alaska; I, in Minnesota; Jane, in Massachusetts—but we have an almost daily email conversation about writing, about life.  It’s one of the greatest gifts of coming together for any kind of program that serves writers, the life-long connections that draw us out of the isolation inherent in our work.

Here’s what Jane said:

Children’s books got into my heart and soul early in life. My pediatrician father had a passion for them, so he was always buying books and reading them aloud as we worked together on jigsaw puzzles. His idea of a great vacation was one where it rained all day so we had to stay inside and listen to the giant bags of books he’d purchased for the trip. 

I think kids’ books got into me in a way most adult books don’t. They latched onto me and came along with me into adulthood. I can still feel what it was like to be in Narnia, or the wilds of Scotland living alone off the land, or in the Hundred Acre Wood. Setting has always been an important character in the books I’ve loved. 

But I’ve also loved books that were subversive, where kids went up against authority and won. Matilda. John Patrick Norman McHennessy, the boy who was always late.  I hated being a kid. The powerlessness. So books like this delighted me. Especially if they involved school and teachers. God, I hated school!

I always wanted to write, though I struggled to read. It wasn’t until I had kids and was reading to them that stories began to come to me. They seemed almost to form themselves. I used to tell kids, it was like looking at one of those Magic Eye pictures, like I was watching a story take shape and just writing down what was happening. 

So the stories came to me, but why kids’ stories? I guess like you, Marion, there was some part of me that needed to figure stuff out, maybe on some level to empower my broken inner child, though I don’t think I was conscious of that. But also, they were just simply the stories I loved. I had great empathy for the characters, I loved that the good guys won, that idiot grownups got their comeuppance. I loved the worlds they took place in, and creating those worlds and those stories gave me great pleasure. And there’s some gratification in writing words that cause readers to feel—to laugh and to cry. 

I think there is a part of me that didn’t feel up to the task of writing for adults. Which is odd, because I think kids can be quite judgmental when it comes to what they’ll read. Grownups are often driven by what they can talk about at cocktail parties. Isn’t that what C. S. Lewis said? But maybe I didn’t feel I had anything cocktail-party-worthy in me. Or maybe I just don’t like cocktail parties. Though, how would I know? I’ve never been to one! 

These days though, I find grownup stories are beginning to push themselves in to my brain. Perhaps because I’m finally to the stage of trying to figure out my grownup self. I don’t know as I’ll ever actually complete one, but I do play around with them. Kids stories come less frequently, though I think much of that is discouragement. I do find it interesting how many kids’ writers have turned to writing adult books in the last couple of years. Somebody—The New York Times?—wrote a whole piece on children’s writers who had their first adult books published last year. Tobin [MT Anderson], for instance. I don’t recall whether anyone said why. And I don’t know if I could find the piece again. 

Anyway, that’s my ramble! 

Anyone else out there who would like to tell their own story?