Today was the annual Young Authors event at my son’s school. Students have been working for weeks to write and illustrate something worthy to be shared across all grades, kindergarten through fifth. Works are then bound, with title pages and back pages, and many include a Dedication and an About the Author blurb on the back. Every student’s work is celebrated, even those who are absent, whose work is read by parent volunteers. Every student receives a certificate and a pencil that proclaims Young Author. Even students who don’t read their work. Even students who are in kindergarten and have only written a few lines or drawn stick figure illustrations. Nothing – misspelled words, inaccurate grammar, missing or incorrect punctuation, incomplete or run-on sentences, and stories that lack one (or perhaps all) of the primary elements of character, setting, plot, conflict or resolution – disqualifies a student from the glory of creating and sharing the written word – their written word.
My group had 10 students. As we did introductions, I stated my name, and jumped right in to create a cohesive group out of children whose paths had rarely crossed for more than a millisecond in the hallway. I announced with pride, “I like to read and write and draw!” Turns out so do they, although one student adamantly likes to read more than to write. I reminded them that there were probably a bunch of other things we liked to do, like sing or play soccer or swim, but since today was Young Author’s Day, we’d focus on writing. I asked them to introduce themselves with not just their name and grade, which the parent helper sheet suggested, but to tell the group just the tiniest hint about what they would read to us later, and to share their favorite illustration. Oh, what a rich reading lay in store for us. The group was primed and ready.
There was the story about Broccoli Man, which actually was about Carrot Man, as the title character didn’t make an appearance in the story. Another story was about a princess goddess. One read a semi-autobiographical story about a father returning from a trip; another story had clear autobiographical undertones (the fear of thunderstorms and an annoying little sister) attributed to fictional characters. Since the real-life little sister was in the group and didn’t show any sign of recognizing the thinly veiled references, this attempt at protecting another’s identity was far more successful than is often the case in first person narratives. The youngest reader, still in kindergarten, wrote a few lines under his stick figure drawings. I was sure I’d remember his story, even though his young little voice was hard to hear in our group set in the gym, but all I can recall is how wide his brown eyes were as he proudly tore through the words, with no inflection, tone or even breath between words, lines and pages, but rather the sheer force of READING something he wrote to a group of kids he’d never really known before but he was READING HIS STORY AND THEY WERE LISTENING. His puppy brown eyes and red t-shirt and innocence and pride and shy smile remain, even though his creation has faded.
The first graders read poetry, as that was the curriculum unit in which today’s event fell. The fifth graders wrote futuristic science fiction stories, to coincide with our city’s anniversary of the World’s Fair and numerous civic celebrations predicting what the next 50 years would bring. My son wrote a complicated story about a cruise ship that could fly, with a cast of fifth graders, their teacher, robots, and the ship’s crew in a variety of scenes. He experimented with humor by putting intentionally funny lines in it. He was gratified to receive laughter and giggles, and even a few knee-slaps, at just the right places – his audience got him.
The group was an appreciative and kind audience. They clapped after each story, asked to see drawings if the author/illustrator hadn’t swept the page in their direction, and listened even as their bodies wriggled and flattened on the gym floor. They didn’t speak over one another, didn’t interrupt; their gaze stayed pretty much within our group’s circle, although there was plenty else they could have watched during our 30 minutes in the gym, with several other reading circles a few meters away. They took this time seriously. This was the Friday before Memorial Day weekend; about-to-be-let-out-for-a-long-weekend energy was high, the weather outside turning solidly to sunshine and Springtime, and there was little reason to expect such full attention and cooperation. They were a more respectful, receptive audience than I have witnessed at “real” author readings.
My favorite reading (other than my son’s, of course), was a poem entitled, Orange Ball. I may have missed some of the words, as the first grader zoomed through it quickly. But my eye caught the words on the page: each line was typed in a different font size. WOW was pretty big; WHAM seemed to be in 36 point; SPLAT was even larger/louder.
After all the students had read, this student said he had another poem he wanted to share. This was Velvet Ball. He followed this with Blue Ball. He had written a series. Each ball moved, picked up speed, crashed in one way or another, and then the poem ended. The poet’s inner life remained concealed, and there seemed to be no symbolism (other than a young boy celebrating “balls” but that discussion is best saved for another time). There was no hidden emotive or evocative experience other than the sheer joy of writing a poem with words like SPLAT in it, the almost illicit thrill to write such words, and the wonder of seeing them expand ever larger on the screen and then the page. Yet I defy anyone in the event’s attendance to deny the pure poetry of the moment.
Of course, part of my reaction is the obligatory insertion of time and distance that grown-ups bring to children’s experiences. When I was a child, I will begin, no one other than my teacher read my work. No one assumed I, or anyone else, for that matter, wrote because I was an author. Therefore, no audience was required. I wrote because the state curriculum told the teacher to have the students write. Stories were not published, and no one assumed my personal history (About the Author: I like spaghetti and my dog and my favorite book is Mandy) was worth sharing or that it in any way impacted my writing. For as much as I had to write as a kid, I was writing assignments. We were students, not authors. We illustrated our work not because one day someone in our classroom would become an illustrator, but because something had to go on the bottom of the otherwise glaringly white page, and some kind of activity had to be offered to fill the time span when the kids who hated writing were waiting for the long-winded in the class to finish.
I like the over-inflated narcissism inherent in the Young Author’s event. Why not tell each and every kid they are an author, illustrator, musician, mathematician, scientist, athlete. That they will have an audience for their crude orange-triangle-person with legs, their meandering story of a princess goddess, their semi-autobiographical narrative in which they struggle with parental absence, their poetry about balls. It’s so easy to be the audience. It takes no effort to suspend the adult blinders of judgment and literary criticism, and as soon as you do, you encounter the magic of young minds at work.
I sometimes wonder if I’m an author, as I write sans audience most of the time. I don’t have a pencil that defines me as a “Middle-Aged Author.” I write, but what does it take to go from being a person who writes to being an author? Maybe all it takes is an audience. Or the perception and anticipation of an audience. The narcissism that anything scratched out from one mind would make a difference to another. Young Authors Day reminded me of the unique joy of being the one who receives another’s words. That it isn’t actually narcissistic to think of oneself as an author. Without the author, there is no opportunity to be an audience – to experience something one could not have were it not for the sound or image that bounces, like an orange/velvet/blue ball, from one mind to the next.
-Many thanks to today’s students who gave me the chance to be an audience: Eva D., Hannah D., Sophie D., Jairen D., Beckett D., Rachell D., Ryan D., Jarrett J., Angeline Y., and Justin W-G.