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How scary?
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From: Robie H. Harris <robieharris_at_mac.com>
Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 16:53:39 -0500
Great you chose this topic—SCARY—and that this conversation is happening after Halloween when scary things keep on happening. When I wrote about “scary” in When Lions Roar, the question that I battled with over and over again was: “How scary should the text be?” I didn’t know it at the time, but when Chris Raschka was creating the art, I believe he was having the very same battle. I began writing this text shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, which of course terrified all of us and in many ways still terrifies us. I didn’t work on this text again until several years later, although the idea never left my mind. When I went back to it, I realized that what I wrote soon after 9/11, while honest, was too, too scary for most young children—and even for me. So I tossed almost all of that text except for a few lines, which are now in the finished book.
As soon as I did that I was able to think about fear from the perch of a young child—not from my perch—and also that conquering fear is something young children try to do. They want to be brave. They want to stand up to fear. And we as adults have that those very same feelings. I realized that for young child connect with my story, the fears had to be “honest’ and real and yes, scary, quite scary. Still, I spent weeks on end trying to figure out how scary to make the events in this book because I was writing it for young children. One day, I wrote text that was super-scary, another day I wrote text that was not all that scary.
One day, it popped into my head that one of the most scary moments for most young children, but not all, is when a parent yells. And when a parent yells that too can feel very scary—even when the parent is not yelling at his or her child. but yelling at or about something else. And that’s when I realized that “parents yelling” had to go into the book. I felt it would be dishonest not to put that in because that’s what young children experience.
Each time I write a text about a young child, I agonize for weeks on end over how angry, how upset, how jealous, how disobedient, how sad, and yes how fearful, to make my young protagonists. I am really curious to know what kinds of things others agonize over in picture books, including fear, whether you are a writer, illustrator, librarian, teacher, parent, reviewer, editor, or anyone else who is in the field of children’s books.
Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 16:53:39 -0500
Great you chose this topic—SCARY—and that this conversation is happening after Halloween when scary things keep on happening. When I wrote about “scary” in When Lions Roar, the question that I battled with over and over again was: “How scary should the text be?” I didn’t know it at the time, but when Chris Raschka was creating the art, I believe he was having the very same battle. I began writing this text shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, which of course terrified all of us and in many ways still terrifies us. I didn’t work on this text again until several years later, although the idea never left my mind. When I went back to it, I realized that what I wrote soon after 9/11, while honest, was too, too scary for most young children—and even for me. So I tossed almost all of that text except for a few lines, which are now in the finished book.
As soon as I did that I was able to think about fear from the perch of a young child—not from my perch—and also that conquering fear is something young children try to do. They want to be brave. They want to stand up to fear. And we as adults have that those very same feelings. I realized that for young child connect with my story, the fears had to be “honest’ and real and yes, scary, quite scary. Still, I spent weeks on end trying to figure out how scary to make the events in this book because I was writing it for young children. One day, I wrote text that was super-scary, another day I wrote text that was not all that scary.
One day, it popped into my head that one of the most scary moments for most young children, but not all, is when a parent yells. And when a parent yells that too can feel very scary—even when the parent is not yelling at his or her child. but yelling at or about something else. And that’s when I realized that “parents yelling” had to go into the book. I felt it would be dishonest not to put that in because that’s what young children experience.
Each time I write a text about a young child, I agonize for weeks on end over how angry, how upset, how jealous, how disobedient, how sad, and yes how fearful, to make my young protagonists. I am really curious to know what kinds of things others agonize over in picture books, including fear, whether you are a writer, illustrator, librarian, teacher, parent, reviewer, editor, or anyone else who is in the field of children’s books.
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Received on Thu 07 Nov 2013 03:54:20 PM CST
