Cheryl Blackford
  • Home
  • About Me
  • My Books
    • Hungry Coyote
    • Lizzie and The Lost Baby
  • Teachers&Parents
    • Hungry Coyote Resources
    • Lizzie and The Lost Baby Resources
    • School Visit Information
    • Creativity Resources
  • Contact Me
  • Bookish Wisdom Blog

Meg Rosoff: Imagination and Faults

8/27/2014

0 Comments

 
Curiosity and imagination fuel successful writers. It's hard for me to believe that anyone would criticize imagination with respect to children's books, yet, according to Meg Rosoff, two prominent people (a Canadian researcher and Richard Dawkins) have done just that.

Meg Rosoff opened the 2014 SCBWI LA conference with a hilarious rendition of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, told from a literal perspective. In Meg's version, Goldilocks finds rotting rabbits to eat instead of porridge, and piles of leaves and bear poop instead of beds in the bears' den. When the bears return home, Goldilocks meets an unhappy end.

Meg told this version of the story to counteract those folks who say that fantasy and fairy tales lead children to believe in impossibilities - and that's a bad thing. But fantasy and fairy tales promote imagination and imagination is crucial for everyone. Curiosity and imagination cause
people to ask questions, and the answers to those questions might be a new invention, new philosophy, or just a new variation of pasta for dinner. “Imagination and the ability to tell a story will make anyone better at anything, with the possible exception of politicians and accountants,” Meg said. Children's authors ask questions and answer them with stories. What if there's a slime fiend living in that swamp? What if we colonized Mars? What if there was a girl whose fingernails grew six feet long? According to Meg, it's our job as writers to "try to understand the world ... to understand what might be as well as what is." As we write each page, we understand more. How we convey that understanding is up to us.

Jane Resh-Thomas urges her students to discover what story they are "writing behind their backs." What part of yourself have you poured into your story? Where do you see yourself in it? For Meg, that might be reflected in a characters' faults. She insisted that we writers should "treasure our faults" and "look at all the don'ts in your life, all the stubborn, angry, unruly parts." Everyone has faults - we should stop trying to be good and instead
we should be bad, take risks, and embrace what is difficult. She urged us to write the book that we think no one will buy, to write "the strongest, fiercest, most subversive tale you can tell."

Acknowledging faults, let alone treasuring them, is hard. But writing is hard. It requires us to explore uncomfortable truths about ourselves and reveal them in our stories.  By understanding and revealing our faults in our stories, we help children understand and come to terms with the world.

0 Comments
<<Previous

    Cheryl Blackford

    Children's fiction and non-fiction author. Lover of travel, hiking, and all things bookish.

    Archives

    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    January 2017
    August 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014

    Categories

    All
    Alitas Program
    Asylum Seekers
    Coyotes
    Diversity
    Hungry Coyote
    Immigrants
    Kidlit
    My Books
    Nature
    Peru
    Writing Craft

    RSS Feed

    Writing Sites

    Kidlit 411 A one-stop place for information about children's literature.
    The Brown Bookshelf A blog promoting and celebrating African American authors/illustrators of children's books. 
    Reading While White A blog promoting diversity in children's literature. 
    Nerdy Book Club. A site for anyone who loves books written for young people.
    ​
    Inkygirl. Debbie Ohi's web site with information for children's authors and illustrators.


Copyright: Cheryl Blackford, 2021