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Not Just Kid Stuff by Tara Hayes

The Seattle area is home to a wealth of talented women writing books for children. This month a cross section of these artists and businesswomen — creators of everything from baby board books to young adult novels — spoke with Seattle Woman to explain what it is they do, and why.

They wander alone through night forests, red mountains and hidden isles — charged with the task of drawing forth characters and stories from these imagined places: boys on fiery-maned horses, historical heroines and current day sleuths, rascally wolf thieves, and shy little elephants. Writers of children’s literature create colorful worlds of rhythm and rhyme, magic and drama, song and legend. It’s no small task — and one fraught with its own dangers. Yet in and around Seattle a slew of women persist in writing for children who range from the pre-literate to those on the edge of adulthood. They are doing the day in, day out work of getting their words out in the world to inspire, educate and entertain the next generation.

Seattle is known as one of the most literate cities in the country, a reputation perhaps owing to childhoods spent reading. A love for books roots early; experiencing this is part of what inspires children’s authors to reach out to their young audiences. “When I was a kid I was a voracious reader,” says young adult novelist Mary Jane Beaufrand. Her first novel — Primavera, released in March — is an adventure set during the Italian Renaissance. The books that affected her most were the ones read “when I was that sick asthmatic kid sitting on the sofa.” She wants to give kids a solid reading experience: “It’s my responsibility to pass it on to the next generation.”

Picture book author Carmela D’Amico agrees. Although not an ace student, she lost herself in books. “You just naturally stay educated, she says.” The fourth book in her Ella the elephant series (Ella Sets Sail), co-created with her illustrator husband Steve D’Amico, is due out in June and D’Amico says that sharing Ella with schoolchildren strengthened her understanding of the importance of early literacy. “It’s the children who read, and read well — their whole education is bolstered by that.”

Linda Johns is a librarian and author of the Seattle-based Hannah West mystery series which is geared toward readers in the fourth through sixth grades. It’s a time known as the golden age of reading. “There may not be another point until you are an adult when you read recreationally like that,” she says. It’s these small windows of time and influence that give children’s books so much of their power.

Heartfelt questions drive each of Janet Lee Carey’s children’s novels, many of which are in translation, including one (Wenny Has Wings) which has recently been made into a film in Japan. Despite the deeper themes, she says, “it’s my job to make the story strong enough that it can be read at any level. It can’t just be angst.” It’s got to be a good story that catches interest and addresses the important things in a child’s life.

Even with a good story, the road to that first published book, and a career in children’s literature, can be a circuitous one. “I don’t think I really had a choice in the matter,” says Nina Laden, of her desire to be an author and illustrator. “My parents were both artists; I started writing books at a couple of years old.” Though now the author of many wild and witty picture books, Laden didn’t manage to publish her first, The Night I Followed the Dog, until she was 31, after it sat in a drawer for four years. It takes a special combination of passion, time, drive, persistence, and sometimes twists of fortune, to finally hold that bound book in your hands.

The process is one of evolution, and children’s writers certainly aren’t all the same. Some have children, some don’t. Some have dreamt of writing for kids since they were girls themselves, while others were surprised to find this was a creative outlet that fit. Anjali Banerjee has written two adult novels, three children’s novels, and is working on a fourth. “I wrote as a kid, but I left it and did other things. I never thought of it as a profession until I was older,” she says. Even then she didn’t intend to write a book for children, but Maya Running, a story that tapped into her own childhood in Canada after moving from India, met with success. For Johns, writing fiction was a big leap after an earlier career in journalism. D’Amico wrote poetry first, then tried her hand at several other genres. Only when she had a child did she rediscover children’s books. “I found something that I love,” she acknowledges.

That’s what these authors say — that they’ve found their passion, their voice. But what then? “I knew nothing,” says Dia Calhoun, now the author of six fantasy novels for young adults. She was a graphic designer and logo artist when, at the age of 29, she bought her first computer and started writing for an hour every morning. “I knew I wanted to be a writer,” she says, “and I just decided it was time. Something inside me was finally ready.” Five years of writing, many submissions, and the torturous rate of the publishing process meant 12 years had passed by the time her first novel, Firegold, finally came out. She kept writing all the while.

Carey tells a similar tale; she wrote three novels and revised a fourth for several editors — with no guarantees — before she got a bite. “I can’t encourage anyone to work in this field,” says Margaret Read MacDonald, a former children’s librarian, folklorist and storyteller. She has made a successful second career adapting folktales into picture books, most recently Bat’s Big Game. Each is carefully designed to be read aloud before groups of children. “Competition is extreme,” says MacDonald. “It’s a lot of rejection before you make a sale.” Success requires taking the long view, say these authors, and a daily struggle to keep the faith.

Writing, perhaps especially for a young audience, is a whole lot of work. It’s a vocation, says MacDonald, not an avocation. Over and over again these women hear from those who profess a desire to write a children’s book — one day — like it’s a part-time hobby. “Everyone seems to think they have a picture book in them. That they can knock one off just like that,” says Laden. “It’s not as easy as you think.”

For one, few writers have a lot of time to devote to their craft at the start of their careers, and even established authors struggle for that space. Kids, spouses, day jobs and the daily stuff of life make it difficult to single out an hour, or even 20 minutes, at the beginning. And that’s how it starts. The morning is a favored time, before the other demands of the day crowd in. Liz Gallagher, the author of the recently released The Opposite of Invisible, a Fremont-centered story of a young girl learning the lessons of love and friendship, wrote her book in coffee shops an hour each day before work. Other authors work wherever, whenever — feeding off chaos or, as is Beaufrand’s practice, editing manuscripts during her biweekly wait at the allergist’s office. Then, sometimes, sacrifices must be made. “I don’t clean the house,” MacDonald asserts. “You gotta cut down on something.”

Beyond all the higher aspirations — the impulse to be creative and artistic, the desire to communicate and instill courage or jump-start fun — writing for kids is a business, and not an easy one. MacDonald once sent out a manuscript 300 times before it sold. “Marketing is a big job, and time consuming, she says.” The business side of things, the time commitment and slow climb toward publishing are things people seem to forget when it comes to kids’ books.

These authors want to be seen as professionals, but as women writing for children, there’s sometimes a feeling it is something they have to prove. Beaufrand left a comfortable (and busy) job she enjoyed at Microsoft in order to start a family and pursue her writing ambitions. She was worried about coming across as a dilettante or wannabe. “When you’re a writer and stay-at-home mom, how do you put that in a passport?” she muses. “It’s hard to take yourself seriously as an artist when no one is paying you or telling you that this is going to be out in the world in some way,” says Carey. Even now, Gallagher, having published her first book, says it’s hard to believe that it’s something real.

Of course getting published helps one’s personal sense of validation, but acknowledgment from the outside world may be slower coming. “There’s the whole issue of, is children’s literature literature?” Calhoun points out. “I get it from some of my own friends: ‘When are you going to write a real book, an adult book?’ And of course that rubs me the wrong way. Because children’s literature is literature.” It’s a question oft asked of children’s authors. “Sometimes I feel people think I self-publish and just sell [the books] out of the back of my car,” says Johns. It can be frustrating to have years of effort regarded as something less than professional.

Certainly it’s a profession with its own set of challenges: How to market the books, keep sales up and figure out how to stay relevant while still doing what it is you love to do. “You have to make strategic career decisions,” says Banerjee. New questions arise after that first publication. Should you accept a lucrative nonfiction project that will take time away from writing children’s novels? Write in a new style to reach a more popular audience? Allow editorial changes that might compromise your original vision?

During the writing phase, these practical questions have to be put aside. “You have to not think too much about that when you are writing,” says Banerjee, “You don’t want to be too safe when you write.” For Calhoun’s part, the critical voice of the censor is a dragon to be slain during the creative process. “If I start thinking, ‘Is this going to be popular? Are parents going to like it? Is it going to get good reviews?,’ I can’t write a word.” “You can’t set out to write a best seller,” says Laden. Her colleagues agree that there’s no magic formula.

Then there’s the question of what comes next. With no guarantee that a published book will meet with success, or a follow-up contract, says Calhoun, you simply have to keep going. “I have to keep writing the books I have in me,” she says. Even with more than 15 books published, a writer needs a contingency plan, Laden acknowledges. “I’m not too proud to go back to waitressing,” she says. While publishing is important, say some authors, it’s not the be-all and end-all. There has to be another drive to keep the would-be children’s writers going: a love for what they do. “That’s the thing you really have to have,” says D’Amico, “because then you make time for it. There’s no guarantee of success or money.”

So they return time and again to the desk, the computer, the notepad. They hope for more books, sure; the ability to write full-time; a broader audience. But at heart is the desire to speak to kids, to what they think and what they are going through during the heady and headlong stretch that is childhood. To engage them, fortify them and make them stronger people, whether by creating an interactive learning experience or speaking to issues of change and transformation. It’s about giving something less tangible, along with the entertainment value of the story.

After all their efforts, authors have to let go and send their stories out in the world, hoping they’ll find the right reader. “After a while,” says Carey, “it doesn’t feel so much that it’s my story as that it’s a story, one that has its own life.” It’s free then, to be loved by someone else.

Tara Hayes is a frequent contributor to Seattle Woman.

©2008 Caliope Publishing Company