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

When I was a child, I entertained and soothed myself with stories.  Stories told to myself.  In the privacy of my own mind.  In fact, I can’t remember a time before stories occupied a good part of my attention.  The central character, always the young Marion.  Every night I climbed into bed, eager for the quiet and dark so I could rejoin whatever story filled me that day. 

Sometimes I was three inches tall and lived alone in the dollhouse in the corner of my bedroom.  Not even the dolls actually residing in the dollhouse joined me there.  It was just me.  A tiny me and a tiny house in which everything worked . . . including—and this was very important—the green wooden sink with its faucet and handles shaped from nails and the green wooden toilet with its sealed-down lid!

When our family took what my father called “buggy rides” in our black ’36 Ford, three-inch-tall Marion rode on the roof of the car “protected” by a rail fence.  (Obviously, I didn’t have a very sophisticated understanding of aerodynamics.)

When I was my full-sized self on those rides, I galloped alongside on the strip of grass next to the road on a magnificent palomino.  My horse, borrowed from Roy Rogers, of course. 

Sometimes I grew a tail.  Not a pretty, bushy tail. A long prehensile one.  I could hang from it or whip it over my shoulder and use it like an extra hand.  I longed for that tail even though the idea of it gave me pause.  Where could such an appendage emerge from my clothes without causing embarrassment? 

Most important, though . . . my wings.  Not ordinary wings such as you might find on any bird.  Mine were angel wings.  They sprouted from my shoulders in swooping, white arcs and reached almost to my heels.  Those angel wings weren’t meant to carry me away to some Godly place beyond the clouds.  They simply allowed me to fly about six feet above the ground.  So much better than trudging the summer mile to the town’s public pool.

Once my wings and I arrived at the echoing concrete building that held the indoor pool, I pulled rubber covers over the white feathers to keep them dry then plunged into the deep end.  I hadn’t yet learned to swim, but the wings kept me aloft as easily as if the water were air. 

Away from the pool, my wings called for angel dresses.  Flowing, gossamer dresses in the palest of pinks like cotton candy or the almost blue of ice.  My long, thick hair, released from its braids, cascaded down my back and never, ever tangled.  And of course, because I was an angel, everybody . . . everybody loved me!

The reality underlying all of these stories was the same.  Isolation.  But an enchanted isolation.  Even the love accorded the angel was remote.  The adulation of crowds.  (As an adult, I’ve never wanted that kind of impersonal admiration, and I’ve received enough of it to be very certain of that.)

Then, of course, there were the stories others provided.  I climbed into books the way I might have climbed into a warm bath, immersed myself, lost myself.  I found friends there, old-fashioned friends to be sure because most of my books came from my mother’s childhood home.  Beth in Little Women, for instance.  (Much later, I named my daughter after her.)  Few of you reading this will recognize most of the books that surrounded my childhood:  The Five Little Peppers, Little Prudy’s Story Book, The Little Colonel series, The Bobbsey Twins.  The Bobbsey Twins were reissued in modern dress for my generation, but in my mother’s edition, they wore longish dresses, knickers, and high-button shoes.

I owned a Nancy Drew book, too, a gift from my Sunday school teacher, but my mother didn’t approve of Nancy.  “No young girl,” she told me with a sniff, “could run around on her own like that!”

I read Felix Salten’s Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest and Fifteen Rabbits, read them pell-mell, almost breathless, only to find myself close to tears when I arrived at the last page because there was no more.  (Only in recent years have I learned the art of rereading.  It’s one of the gifts of age . . . to forget so thoroughly that a book, a movie, a thought can come up fresh.)

My love of Bambi prompted me, years later, to write about a wolf pup named Runt, another story of animals living as they truly do in the wild except for being given the power of speech.  Even with a young wolf as my main character, though, the story I told was the same:   A child alienated from a parent or parent figure who struggles to find a way back, a way to be seen, accepted.  Made real.

My love of story has always been so central to my sense of self that it’s been a surprise—a shock, really—to discover that love could fade.  These days, I pick up novels to read, one after the other, and put them down again, dissatisfied, though I can’t say why.  And the ones I set out to write fall apart before they arrive anywhere.  I’m not sure about the why of that, either. 

Is it because the lonely child I build stories for is finally healing? 

If that’s the reason, it’s a cause for rejoicing, certainly.  But one for sadness, too.  I never expected my story well to go dry. 

The blessing in all of this is that in recent years I have been working in a new genre: lyrical, science-based picture books. The Stuff of Stars and We, the Curious Ones are the first of those.  And others are making their slow journey through the publishing pipeline.  A genre defined by what it is not . . . nonfiction.  An entirely new way of expressing my truth.  Not through feelings generated by drama, but spoken straight out.

“Death makes life possible . . . and holy,” says The Stuff of Stars.

“Curiosity keeps the human race moving forward,” says We, the Curious Ones. 

Another idea for a picture book is brewing along with a contract for a new batch of early readers.  Which means, at the ripe age of 86, I’m still a working writer.  How I rejoice at all I’ve been given, at the good work that fills my days.

And how grateful I am for the stories that have played themselves out in me, stories that have taught and healed me . . . and I hope some others!

So, dear readers, an invitation once more:  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.  Ask your friends to do that, too.  I’ll post what you give me with your name—or without—as you choose. 

I would love to include your voices in this conversation!