Young Authors

I had the pleasure of spending a day with a really great group of writers today. Sure, there were published authors like Lesa Cline-Ransom, Stephen Swinburne, Anthony Fredericks, and Sneed Collard III. But they weren't my favorites. No, the highlight of my day was the ten fourth grade authors who entertained and amazed me with their antics, smiles, and love of reading and writing.

Together we spent a little over five hours in Ballentine, South Carolina at the Young Authors Conference. This conference provides an opportunity for fine young writers around the state to spend a day listening to the life stories and advice of published authors from around the country. If they had anything like this when I was a kid I sure never heard anything about it. What an opportunity.

Here were a few highlights...

*   Not long after meeting one another we sat down to await our first author visit and wrote a poem together. Thanks to the inspiration from Deanna's story about a snake that once blew up in her uncle's microwave we wrote the following acrostic poem together. For those who are not familiar with acrostics, the first letter of each line spells out the topic of the poem as you read down.

Mice should never be put
In the microwave
Cause they will
Royally blow up and get
On your mother's
Walls
And she'll be
Vacuuming guts off
Everything

*  At lunch the kids had the greatest conversation about their favorite books. Since only two of them knew each other we were all pretty much strangers. This created the perfect opportunity for each of them to share the authors and stories they love most. "Oh my gosh, Blood on the River is THE best book ever written," exclaimed Autumn. "You HAVE to read it!" This went on and on so I pulled out a small notebook from my backpack and asked everyone to tell me one book that I just have to buy for my classroom. The list they created was great: Blood on the River, Savvy, Percy Jackson, Rainbow Fairies, Taste of Blackberries, The Hunger Games, Found, 39 Clues, How to Steal a Dog, and A Dog on His Own. "Perfect," I told them. "I'll get these and tell my readers how much you loved them. I'm sure they won't be able to wait!"

*  "Have you read Little Women," Deanna asked me. I hadn't. "Well, it's really good. I only just started it and haven't read much though. We have to take an Accelerated Reader test after each book to earn points and we have to have 4.2 points every week. So I can't read too much of Little Women at a time because I have to keep reading shorter books to get my points." "How sad!" I responded, trying to bite my tongue and not make a judgmental statement about her teacher. "Yeah, but when I get my points for this nine weeks then I'll be able to read it more."

* On our way back from lunch Jonathan, one of only two boys in our group of ten, told me "I'm writing this series right now called 'Framed.' It's about...". He joyfully told me all about it. You could tell it was important to him. "I've only just finished the first book but I'm going to be starting the second one soon."

*  "Do you publish books here?" Ezekiel asked. "What?" I asked. "Do you publish books here? You know, when you finish them?" "Oh," I said. "I don't teach here. But I'm sure they do. At least I hope so. Don't you? My class actually publishes their writing to a blog on the internet so that everyone can read it and respond to it." "Cool," he answered. I later noticed him writing during one of the presentations. He was jotting something down in the back of his writing notebook. During a break I asked him if I could see it. He had created a list of his favorite songs and was adding to it each day. He was currently on #73. Jonathan grabbed the notebook from me and started rifling through Ezekiel's pages. "Chris, you've got to see this!" he said. "He's writing this really long story." Sure enough there was a story titled Jake the Spy. The cover page read A slight of comedy...A lot of action. Flipping through it I saw that it was seven chapters long and consisted of twenty or so pages. "Wow," I said. "Yeah, I've been writing it since I was in second grade. I'm in the fourth grade now."

*  "When are we going to write?" Jaden asked during lunch. "Yeah," someone else joined in. "Is this all listening or will we get to write, too?" I didn't know for certain but I was  pretty certain it would be all sitting and listening. As great as these authors were, the kids wanted to show what they could do as well. I didn't blame them. During one of the sessions Jaden sat at my side writing poems and passing them over to me to read.

Cats like to
fidget with playtoys
in stores and
cages that may
not hold
gorillas
but do hold
peacocks

She also wrote an acrostic using the word "Boring." I'm not sure it was so much the authors she was frustrated with but the lack of opportunity to write together. There were others sneaking away small moments to write. I saw Autumn working in her notebook as well. I asked to read it and saw that she had a descriptive piece about a lake. A passage from her piece read "Out of the reeds a family of swans glide silently behind each other breaking the lake surface into a pond of ripples. Dragonflies play hide and seek darting behind the reeds." The whole piece was really cool and she was proud when I asked if I could jot some of it down into my own notebook. "I want to share this with some other writers I know," I told her.

* Kylie told me "I'm going to write these two books called Crime Scene Kate and Medusa Vacation. One is a about a girl who solves crime and the other is about Medusa going to the beach and turning people to stone." "Oh my gosh," I said. "Can I write that down? I'd like to share your ideas with my kids. Those sound like they'll make really interesting stories."

*  Annelise shared with me a list of "bad" words she had memorized. With the help of Autumn she explained that they weren't really BAD words so much as WEAK words. Words you should avoid in your writing. The list she recited included: very, absolutely, am, is, are, was, were, be, been, bring, do, did, does, have, has, had, may, might, must, can, could, shall, should, will, would, really, bad, a lot, and all right. Hearing this, Jasmine responded "Absolutely isn't a weak word. It's juicy!"

*Kylie shared the drawings of horses she had made a few days ago. They were truly amazing. Everyone was in awe of her artistic abilities. She's clearly going to illustrate her own stories. Her favorite type of story? Animal fiction.

By the end of the day I was a bit exhausted from waking up early on a Saturday and sitting for such long periods of time. However, I hated for it to end. We had a great time together, heard a lot of great advice on writing, and had some wonderful conversations around reading and writing. Best of all, my daughter Harper was there to share it with me. She loved the group just as much as I did and was quick to jump in with her own favorite books and stories. On the way to the conference she sat in the back seat working on a biography she's writing about Paula Deen. After the conference she was anxious to buy a book or two and jump in line to get autographs from the authors. Not athletes or movie stars. Authors.

At some  point the kids asked why I was writing down so many of the things they were talking about. I told them I was going to go home and write about our day together and post it to the internet. "All these authors told us to write about what we know," I said. "That's what I'm planning to do." I gave a few of them the address to this blog so they could read about themselves. So here it is guys. I hope you enjoyed it. You all are truly amazing and I hope to see you again next year!