Blogpost 6: DOES WRITING KID’S BOOKS MAKE SENSE? Part 1 Getting Wise about the Why?

     This blogpost is part of a two-part series— DOES WRITING KID’S BOOKS MAKE SENSE/CENTS?  In 2018, The Writers’ Union of Canada published the results of a study showing that not only do Canadian writers earn an average of $9, 380 CAD each year, but that amount has decreased significantly from $12, 879 in 2014.  That is a 27 per cent drop in just three years. I moderated Get that Grant: Tips for Canadian Writers, a annual workshop featuring granting officers from the Canadian, Ontario, and Toronto arts councils, at the Toronto Reference Library.  The event was well-attended indicating that there is a great need for Toronto artists. The largest writing prizes in Canada for children’s literature authors, the TD Children’s Book Award, was raised to $50, 000 in 2019 compared with the largest adult prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, of $100, 000.  Currently, there is only one Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program in Canada in which you can study writing for children and young adults. This MFA is the University of British Columbia (UBC) where you can focus on this along with 2 other writing disciplines. On the first #IReadCanadian Day February 19, I asked my seventh and eighth grade students if they have read any books by Canadian authors and only a few hands went up in each class of twenty plus students.  I’ve seen #kidlit ”get the shaft“ when it comes to literary platforms and barely a session at writing conferences.  I‘ve had people say things like “oh, that’s cute, you write for kids” or heard about the latest celebrity to come out with their own picture book series like it’s that easy and anyone can do it.  (I love books by celebrities as much as the next person and even mention two in this post.  But do know some celebrities have ghostwriters for their books and we might just never know.). Given the paltry income and lack of prestige and fame, why in the world would anyone (in Canada) want to become a writer let alone one in the not as “lucrative field” of children and young adult literature?

1.You have always written (or told) stories.

    When I first got started as a child, I folded papers in half, stapled them, and called them my books. I filled their pages with pencil drawings carefully filled them in with markers, pencil crayons, and my finest penmanship.  I was a six year old author who wasn’t thinking about the money. I just loved to make books and so do you.  

2. Some of your first friends were books.

     I was an early avid reader.  I was also blessed to have a father who took me and my sister to the neighbourhood library.  Admittedly, I did not have a lot of friends as a kid. I was drawn to books about kids from different countries.  I loved to find books where the characters, despite far and few between, looked like me. I read books in the school yard at recess time.  I treasured books like Honey, I Love that made me proud of my skin, my hair, and where I came from even when television and magazines did not show me.  A book like Harriet’s Daughter shown me Black Canadian girlhood experiences on the page. Reading The Color Purple, Waiting to Exhale, Disappearing Acts, and other books by African-American women writers during my teen years made me value my experiences and feel part of a community larger than my high school, Rexdale, and Toronto.  And although I was not married at fourteen nor my husband of eleven years did not leave me, but these books were comforting, reminded me of how resilient I could be, and that there was a circle of friends who always had my back.

3. Your inner child or some child you know needs your book.

    Toni Morrison said Write the story you want to see in the world.  Your book serves that need. Whether it is the reminder that you can always come home for dinner “after the wild rumpus” as in Where the Wild Things Are or that things can turn around after a “horrible, terrible, no good, very bad” day.  Or that little brothers and sisters can be pesky as Ramona Quimby is or your first teachers as in Stella and Sam. I think of the Black and brown boys sitting taller when they read The King of Kindergarten, The Word Collector, or The Stone Thrower.  Your book will make kids laugh too. Just ask Robert Munsch and Jeremy Tankard.

4.  Writing is like breathing.

What happens when we can’t breathe?  We faint or we find ourselves gasping for air. Maya Angelou said there is no greater pain than an untold story which means it is painful, actually causing you physical pain, if you don’t write.  You can’t not write.  Put yourself out of pain.  “Burden” the world with your stories and be surrounded with them and have them reflected back to you.  

5.  You are a Canadian #kidlit pioneer.

Canadian children‘s publishing is still a relatively young field in comparison with the parental American and the stalwart British field.  Your books are contributing to a very critical mass.  Whether your book is about resilient young people who act more like the parents as in The Agony of Bun O’Keefe and No Fixed Address OR if you are a first generation immigrant teen in In the Key of Nira Ghani and Beauty of the Moment  OR mixing indigenous traditions with science fiction in The Marrow Thieves, your books help us to re-imagine Canada.

6.  Your book will change the world.

    When I think of a New York Times bestseller like The Proudest Blue, I think of all of the people picking up and reading this book to learn that the first day a girl wears her hijab it is very special.  Or Sulwe, after being ignored, a girl who prayed for a change but gains a deep love for her dark skin. Whether writing about young environmentalists as in We are Water Protectors, unsung heroes, making new friends, giving consent as in Will Ladybug Hug?, making a cultural food as in Amy Wu and the Perfect Bao and Bilal Cooks Daal, or looking closely at the world around us as in Small World, the world will be better for the stories you write.