Volume 25 · Number 1 · Fall 2007
Alumni Authors
What does it take to become a wordsmith, a magician, a teller of stories — in sum, a children’s writer? Challenges abound, including rejected manuscripts, low pay and competition with celebrity authors of questionable talent who steal the spotlight. Yet several graduates of UC Davis have gone on to spin their imaginative, fanciful and fantastic tales into books for young readers. Here, seven Aggie-alumni-turned-children’s-authors share the what, why and how of working their craft.
Storybook Time
Recognizing the value of children’s literature for both young and older readers, UC Davis is bringing children’s books and authors into the college classroom.
Once upon a time, a little boy named Johnny fell into a book. It didn’t hurt, and it happened all at once, quite by accident. One minute, Johnny was sitting in his classroom, listening to his teacher read the book and turn the pages. The next minute, he found himself in another world, surrounded by brightly colored animals and plants, and people who dressed differently and ate different foods. Johnny smiled in wonder at the new things he had never seen before.
Johnny was so excited about the story that his teacher helped him check out the book from the school library. At home, Johnny asked his parents to read the book to him again and again, until he could read it all by himself. He loved how the words sounded together, especially the new words that he had never used before. When his teacher asked him to write a story of his own, he put some of the words together to create a fantastic new journey, much like the world that he discovered in his favorite book.
Educators at UC Davis believe that children’s literature can make this story a reality for children everywhere. Both a good bedtime story and an effective classroom tool, a children’s book can teach young children the use of words and language in a friendly way, and help improve their writing skills. It can also introduce children to a whole world of cultural experiences. Yet, as schoolrooms become increasingly dominated by standardized testing, UC Davis instructors fear that the value of children’s literature may be overlooked. So at UC Davis new programs for future teachers are refocusing attention on the subject. And in recognition of the benefits of children’s literature for adults as well as children, the books are also playing an important role in some undergraduate classrooms.
In the UC Davis School of Education, a Children’s Writer/Illustrator-in-Residence program was recently established to champion children’s literature. A former educator and published children’s author, who wishes to remain anonymous, provided the endowment for the program, which brought author Alma Flor Ada to campus for discussions and workshops with the school’s teaching credential students in early 2007.
The prolific author of nearly 300 books for children, Ada discussed approaches to using poetry in the classroom, and then prompted the future and current teachers to explore their identities by writing reflective poems of their own.
“When teachers engage in that form of authorship, they can speak to children about writing from an insider’s perspective,” said the writer-in-residence, who brings to the program her experience as an author, researcher and professor emerita of international and multicultural education at the University of San Francisco.
Ada also emphasized how children’s literature can be a window into the diversity of culture and experience. Many of her own books have been published in both Spanish and English, including Gathering the Sun, a bilingual ABC book of poems, and La lagartija y el sol/The Lizard and the Sun, a bilingual retelling of a Mexican folktale.
“Children need to see themselves reflected, and see their family and their reality reflected in their education process, so they feel they can truly belong to what’s being presented to them,” she said.
Joanne Galli-Banducci, School of Education lecturer and supervisor of teacher education, puts this idea into practice as chair of the school’s lecture series “Words Take Wing: Honoring Diversity in Children’s Literature.” Now in its fourth year, the program has previously explored Asian, Latino and African American cultures by inviting children’s authors Laurence Yep, Pam Muñoz Ryan and Patricia McKissack to speak at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts. This year promises a visit from Robert D. San Souci, whose books include retellings of traditional folktales from around the world.
“Connecting to your background knowledge is so important in understanding text,” said Galli-Banducci, noting the rich diversity of cultural backgrounds found in California. “It can only empower us as people living together if we know the history of those different stories and honor them.”
The 2007 program featured Patricia Mc-Kissack, whom Galli-Banducci called an oasis for African American biographies and history. Sometimes writing with her husband, Fred, McKissack has published over 100 books, including Mirandy and Brother Wind, Sojourner Truth: Ain’t I a Woman? and the Newbery Honor recipient The Dark-Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural.
During her February visit, McKissack shared her stories and experiences at an afternoon talk attended by many classes of children, including nine classes from Davis, Sacramento, Fairfield and Dixon, whose admission to the talk was supported by the School of Education Community Fund. She gave an evening talk for the university and Davis community. McKissack said she was spurred to write by the glaring absence of African American characters in children’s literature. “Stories help us make good decisions, and if you don’t see yourself in books, you can’t make good decisions,” she said, adding that her stories are not written just for African American children, but for all children.
McKissack said she draws some of her inspiration from her experiences growing up in segregated Nashville, Tenn. As a young girl, she couldn’t go into the fine lobby of the Grand Hotel, into the fancy restaurant with flowers on the tables or into the Grand Ole Opry. But one place that turned no one away was the Nashville Public Library, which proclaimed over its doors: “All Are Welcome.” McKissack celebrated this literary haven in a book of her own, called Goin’ Someplace Special.
Galli-Banducci hopes that “Words Take Wing” will turn UC Davis into a similarly welcoming and special place for visiting school children.
“The first year when the busses unloaded in front of the Mondavi Center, I was just awestruck because the children were having that experience. You think maybe you’ve touched a little part of their world,” she said. “The human connection of standing in line for an autograph and shaking an author’s hand is pretty incredible for a child. It is for me, too; I never tire of it!”
Galli-Banducci believes her college students and future teachers can also benefit from the rich experience of children’s literature. Bookshelves lined end to end with children’s books occupy an entire wall of her office, creating a personal library that she shares with students in the School of Education. When teaching a class on reading methods, she also asks students to create books of their own that map out their personal path to literacy.
The education students write a brief memoir of their early literary development, recalling who served as the storytellers, what language they first learned to read, which books they begged to hear again or loved to read for themselves. Students then interview a classmate of a different cultural or linguistic background, and share their own reading struggles and successes. The project culminates in the creation of an accordion book, which unfolds like a chain of paper dolls. Students write and illustrate their own story on one side of each page and that of their interview partner on the other.
Galli-Banducci said she hopes that the experience helps these new and future teachers relate to their students of different backgrounds, noting that student teachers from UC Davis work in schools with multicultural student populations. “The paths to literacy are diverse, and we need to honor and respect them,” she said.
When John Boe, a lecturer in the University Writing Program, was young, he received “the best Christmas present ever”: an entire box of baseball books. It was a gift that’s still giving. Reading for pleasure sparked his lifelong love of reading — a love that he shares each year with hundreds of students.
An expert on stories and storytelling, Boe taught an undergraduate upper-division children’s literature class for over 20 years, regularly filling a 200-student lecture hall. He said the popularity of the class is no surprise among a student population recently grown out of childhood.
“Children’s literature gets us back to that heart of literature. The reason you go into literature is not to be educated, but to be entertained,” said Boe, who currently teaches a class in fairy tales and fables. “Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be played, not to have people write critical essays about them.”
After slogging through dry textbooks and dense adult classics, it is little wonder that college students jump at a chance to read Charlotte’s Web or Peter Pan for homework. Boe said he designed a reading list to acquaint students with the classics they may not have read as children, such as Alice in Wonderland or Treasure Island, as well as more contemporary books like Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and Harry Potter books.
Once students learn the hallmarks of good children’s literature, Boe hopes they will point younger readers toward their favorites. “It’s a wonderful class for people who are going to be parents or teachers. I have always thought of my students as future parents,” he said. He also invited published children’s authors, including UC Davis alumna Ginger Wadsworth ’67, to share their perspective and experience with the writing and publishing process.
Boe said he tried to prevent students from picking the stories apart for analysis. “I try to stay away from symbolism and stay on the surface. You do want to see what tricks the writer is playing, but also to read like a child.” However, he added, a book doesn’t make it into a college class taught to adults if it appeals only to children. The story needs to have characters, plot and themes complex enough to fill an hour-long discussion or two. Boe pointed out that children’s books often become classics by hooking both adults and children. “Adults are often the ones who buy books, so a book has to appeal to adults to get into a child’s hands and into libraries.”
With films, television and the Internet now competing for students’ attention, Boe mentioned that they (and everyone else) are reading less. But reading — unlike watching a rapidly paced film — provides an important opportunity for children to develop a sense of consciousness by granting the space to stop and reflect. Boe said the beauty of reading is that it lets a child take the story at his or her own pace.
“We’re all still children,” he said, adding that readers of all ages can reconnect with childhood pleasure. “It’s easy to fall into the childlike ways of reading, of just turning the page.”
Erin Loury has been an intern in the University Communications office for two years. Newly graduated, she now plans to pursue research in marine biology and eventually become a science writer.