Author Yolen shares a few pages on writing

Author Yolen shares a few pages on writing By Linda Carman

WILLIAMSTOWN- Jane Yolen, who has written 250 books for children over her 40-year-and-counting career, gave teachers at Williamstown Elementary School some advice Monday-basic advice:

“For children to be better writers, first they’ve got to be readers,” Yolen said.

Gaining a murmur of recognition from teachers, she added, “You’re so busy teaching to the MCAS [Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System test] that you don’t have that 15 minutes for reading aloud or gathering kids in small groups talking about what they’re reading.”

Yolen’s talk was part of “Words Are Wonderful,” the annual celebration of language and literature, and was co-sponsored by Inkberry, a non-profit literary center in North Adams. Her visit, which included a reading and book-signing that evening, was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Yolen, whose numerous awards include the Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children (in 1987 for “Owl Moon”), also urged teachers to just let their young readers forge ahead and read: Only after they’ve finished a book should they return to examine specific aspects such as metaphor, symbolism and other literary devices.

She said her fifth grade granddaughter recently exclaimed “I hate this book!” about a story that required stopping to answer questions at the end of each chapter and prohibited on reading ahead.

“I’d hate that book, too,” Yolen said. “If I were a reading teacher, I’d let children go through the book before taking it apart. It’s stopping them to ask, ‘What are three most important things in the last chapter?’ Well, I don’t know. I want to gallop on.”

Speaking before and after the talk, several teachers and Susan Hyde, school librarian, discussed the influence “Words Are Wonderful” has on the youngsters. Since September, the children have been reading books by Yolen and other authors who are part of the event, Hyde said.

“The kids are excited about the authors, especially Jane Yolen, who is so prolific, and Joseph Bruchac, who wrote a scary book, ‘Skeleton Man,’ that a lot of the older kids really liked,” Hyde said. ‘They look forward to the character parade-to dress up as their favorite book characters or as words-and the little children like the community readers. They’re energized.”

The character parade, was held yesterday at the school. Community readers are local parents and sometimes town officials and celebrities who come into classrooms to read to the youngsters.

A group of four teachers, sitting together, who were asked if the youngsters like the 10-day celebration, responded that the children love it-not only because of the parade and the visiting authors but also because events are very interactive.

Deborah Dane, who coordinates “Words Are Wonderful” with Liz Costley, said, “Our goal is to celebrate the power and magic of words. We have old partnerships and we’ve made new ones. This is the first year Inkberry has been part of it.”

Yolen’s books, in a range of genres-poetry, history, biography, picture books, reworking of old fairy tales and stories-are for children from the smallest to young adults. Yolen urged her audience, which included librarians and writers as well as teachers, to “look so you can see” and to sharpen their powers of observation so they can depict and describe landscape-both to set their characters in a specific place and to call forth aspects of their character.

“Place can explain much about characters,” she said, noting the contrast of forest and desert in “Lord of the Rings.”

“Landscape can even be a character,” she said.

Her catalogue of potent landscapes includes the sea itself in “Moby-Dick,” the rough island where Robinson Crusoe is marooned, “The Secret Garden,” which redeems two children, and the Yorkshire moors where Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff roamed, as wild and untamed as their surroundings. Then, there is the place of epiphan, where in, “The Wind in the Willows,” Rat and mole find the great god Pan, “the beating heart of the world.” Finally, Yolen said, Alice, in “Alice in Wonderland” travels through a succession of setting underlining the changes she herself undergoes.

Landscape can be depicted in three ways, Yolen said.

“First, find large shapes, such as the ocean, mountains or clouds; second, describe singular features, such as a rock, a bird, a solitary gnarled tree.” One of her examples was “a blood-colored flower near the outstretched hand of a dead knight.” Others were individual features, such as a gray porous rock, or a morning glory straining for the sun.

“Life happens around you,” Yolen said, urging teacher to take youngsters outside, even for 10 minutes, each day, and ask them to describe what they see.

Also, she urged extensive research-in geology books, bird books, books on painting and music. Description of a setting builds trust in the reader, she said.

“If I can draw it, I can draw the reader in,” she said. “If we are truly lucky, and hard at work, we will make it unforgettable, and that’s what books for children should be.

Yolen, whose parents were both writers, and whose children continue in what she called the “family business,” said that although she writes only books she feels passionate about, her long experience tells her what is viable. For example, historical novels for children sell only if they are in the American Revolution or World War II-settings that enable them to be taught in school. That means that a book about medieval Japan, however well it is critically received, can languish.

Editors today-“the 12-year-olds steeped in chick lit”-as she described them, are on the wavelength determined by television. Four and a half pages of description, however crucial to the story, are out. And decisions on which books to publish are, she said, increasingly determined by “suits,” who market to Wal-Mart, Costco and Barnes and Noble. The market-driven publishing world excludes books, however compelling, that don’t fit the checklist of these mass marketers, unless those books are written by celebrities, she said.

As for her favorites among all her books, she named “Owl Moon,” “Devil’s Arithmetic: (about the Holocaust) and “always what I am writing on now.”