I wouldn’t call myself a children’s book writer, but I have been writing stories for tweens for the last two years (only one of the five have been published…ugh) and I’ve learned something that needs to be addressed: kids are smart.
My editors, who I value as friends and bosses, and the higher-ups have made several comments on script drafts that left me baffled. The first of these comments was “a 12- to 15- year-old isn’t going to know the word ‘tithing’”. Well sure they don’t. They don’t because no one has presented that word to them, but if we do, right now, they’re going to figure it out.
Tweens and children today are more resourceful than I ever was growing up. I say that because of ease of access to knowledge. When I was 13, I’d have to grab the encyclopedia or have my parents drop me off at the library, I was that kid, to learn about Iran’s history and cultural significance or to look at art from Japan. Today, kids can sit down at a computer, or their iPhones, and look things up on Wikipedia. Information is so easy to access that new laws are being created every day to prevent our children from accessing the vast amounts of smut on the net. V-chips and parental controls and…well, I’ve gone off topic.
The point here is that if you present a word like “tithing” and offer a short explanation or implied meaning, kids are going to figure it out. And if they don’t figure it out, they’ll go to dictionary.com and look it up; or, they’ll ask their parents; which should happen a lot more, in my opinion, than occurs right now.
Another example is that an editor told me tweens wouldn’t understand the concept of guilt in relation to giving to the poor. But I submit that they do. Unless these children are living in an area with no poverty (I don’t know that such a place exists) or homeless, they’re going to see beggars. And what’s more, seeing beggars allows parents to explain a myriad of things to their children. Off the top of my head: guilt, pity, compassion, love, generosity, several religious stories (if you go that route), and mental illness – ignoring, one would hope, the need for “lessons” on how not to become poor or using them as an example of who is “worthless” as one parent I walked by yesterday put it. Those are important things to learn if you’re growing up. (Truthfully, it wasn’t until I was around 10 or so that I saw my first beggar and I felt awful. It took a conversation with my dad about love and compassion on how to sort out the heft of the emotions I was feeling.)
These kids understand these experiences, they’ve had them. Sure, it might be more simplistic than we might look at it and their sphere of experience is vastly smaller, but they understand the concept. Sociologists have been studying the pit-of-the-stomach feeling children have when they see a homeless person for years and they seem to come to the same conclusion, those children feel terrible. They feel as though they should do something to help that homeless person and that turning away feels even worse. Its important for someone, us if parents don’t, to address these emotions. If we or parents don’t, this leaves our children stunted and confused as to what they should do the next time they see a homeless or downtrodden person. These are things that are imperative for everyone to learn and understand as early in their progression as possible.
My little sister isn’t so little anymore. At 15 she’s learning to drive, enjoying her first summer after her freshman year of high school, and feeling the pull of adulthood. Sure, she might be a tad more mature than some of the other girl’s her age and she may have read more complex books at an early age than other kids her age but that’s because we, and she, pushed her(self). We suggested books that I read in high school and she read them in junior high, books I read in college and she’s reading them right now.
Perhaps this is a direct result of seeing what her older brother and sister are reading or talking about and wanting to be part of that world but I think the real reason is her desire to understand things more quickly than we do right now. We’re growing a generation of incredibly quick kids. They understand concepts faster and with more ease than any generation before them and that must be fostered. If not, they’ll hit a wall and delve into a world of confusing concepts that they may actually not be ready for like sex, drugs, adultery, and that gnashing sound of bills and a lack of funds and concern about pay. These are subjects that they may not, or may I don’t know, be ready for, and that’s where we should draw the line.
on Jul 8th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Some great points. Kids are quite smart.
on Jul 21st, 2009 at 6:55 am
This begs the question of whether those editors and “higher-ups” think books are either for learning or for enjoyment, and I submit that, at that age, books are neither if not both.
Recently, I’ve revisited some books that I read at that age and later and found many things that I simply didn’t “get” at that age, but which did not detract from my experience of the book.
Keep at it my friend, you’re an excellent writer!