All Things Middle Grade
- Thread starter timp67
- Start date
Happy birthday, David! 
Happy Birthday, David!
Also, does anyone here know of any good MG or YA writing conventions in the Michigan (preferred) - Ohio - Chicago area? I'd love to attend one.
Also, does anyone here know of any good MG or YA writing conventions in the Michigan (preferred) - Ohio - Chicago area? I'd love to attend one.
Happy Birthday, David!
Wordcaster, SCBWI-Michigan has a one-day conference coming up in May. It's craft-intensive with limited spots per workshop. Link: http://kidsbooklink.org/id23.html
The chapter's Fall Conference in September is going to be on Mackinac Island.
[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif][/FONT]
Wordcaster, SCBWI-Michigan has a one-day conference coming up in May. It's craft-intensive with limited spots per workshop. Link: http://kidsbooklink.org/id23.html
The chapter's Fall Conference in September is going to be on Mackinac Island.
[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif][/FONT]
That's a riot! I read my son the first few chapters of James and the Giant Peach before bed and I think he was asleep after the first one. He's NEVER fallen asleep during book time before. Oh- and has anyone else ever noticed how creepy the sketches are in the original book? (Not the movie makeover) James looks like a psycho serial killer!
Hey, this con seems right up my alley. I'll have to see if I can convince the mrs. that it is worth the money and worth stranding her at home with our twins for another day of the week.
I went to the regional National History Day competition today. Lots of cool exhibits. Nerdy kids are awesome.
Last edited:
I found an awesome picture of Diana Wynne Jones to put in my blog tribute. Link in signature.
Oh, no! This is the first I heard she'd died. What a loss for all of us...
thanks for sharing, timp.
thanks for sharing, timp.
I'm working on a book that's probably going to wind up upper-MG, and I'm looking for advice. Will readers in that age group have trouble with flashbacks? How about metaphors? Are these areas you have to adjust for MG readers?
All those things are acceptable. What would help you a lot is to go to the kids section of the library and pick out a stack of fat MG novels that are recent (last ten years). There's a good thread with lots of book reccies in the kidlit forum too. It's hard to write MG without knowing the market (what flies and what doesn't), and it's much different than it was 15 or more years ago.
I've read a fair amount of MG and it seems to be all over the place. Stroud and Turner and Funke are quite different from the Redfern books, for instance. I guess that's my answer.
ETA: What made me think of this was a friend saying that her grade school age daughter can't understand metaphor. If you say, you can't judge a book by its cover, the daughter thinks you're talking about an actual book. So I thought there might be something developmental here that I should know about.
Developmental stuff runs really late. I've taught college students and even freshmen have trouble distinguishing the opinion of someone a newpaper writer quotes from the opinion of the writer. So I wondered if here were comparable things for MG readers.
ETA: What made me think of this was a friend saying that her grade school age daughter can't understand metaphor. If you say, you can't judge a book by its cover, the daughter thinks you're talking about an actual book. So I thought there might be something developmental here that I should know about.
Developmental stuff runs really late. I've taught college students and even freshmen have trouble distinguishing the opinion of someone a newpaper writer quotes from the opinion of the writer. So I wondered if here were comparable things for MG readers.
Last edited:
I think the kookier the metaphor, the easier kids can understand that it's not a literal description. "His bushy eyebrows were like two hairy caterpillars," for example. Similes, I would avoid for younger readers. "His busy eyebrows were two hairy caterpillars" is easy for ME to read literally.
One thing about young readers is that they're really good at ignoring stuff they don't understand, and reading on. I think if an adult is reading something with a lot of sentences or words they don't understand (like, if you handed Average Joe a neurobiology research paper), they'll shut down and not finish reading. But a kid will just plow right through because they're interested in the story, and they are also very used to not understanding things. That's what they do. So some vivid imagery in the form of metaphor will either have an emotional impact, or just get skipped over.
When I was little I could read a book with sex scenes in it, and not even know there was any sex in the story (although I knew what sex was and how one had it), because I had skipped past all the boring pages with the characters rolling around petting one another and kissing and suchlike. Yawn-a-rama!
When I was little I could read a book with sex scenes in it, and not even know there was any sex in the story (although I knew what sex was and how one had it), because I had skipped past all the boring pages with the characters rolling around petting one another and kissing and suchlike. Yawn-a-rama!
WHAT WERE THESE BOOKS YOU WERE READING WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, KITTY???
And how did you get them past the librarian?
And how did you get them past the librarian?
rofl! My dad was really big on not censoring my reading, although sometimes he would advise me that it would be better to read certain books when I was older instead. I think my first adult book was Jurassic Park at age 8--I think my folks bought me the paperback. Soon after was my first Inappropriate Read--It by Stephen King. I found the paperback at my grandparents house, and both parents plus both grandparents knew I was reading it and didn't bother to stop me. I totally did not realize that the girl has to have sex with all the boys OMFG. I do remember crying about one of the characters dying at the very end, though. What else? When I was about 10, I read Even Cowgirls Get The Blues by Tom Robbins, which is full of sex and not much else. Oh, and Stranger in a Strange Land--hooray for orgies and creepy outdated sexist views! Got that one at the bookstore. Anyway, I'm none the worse for all my inappropriate reading!
And NOW you're reading all the harmless fun MG books. Makes sense to me.
I used to love reading all of those too
What I skipped over as a kid was YA books--I probably read three at the most. Now I'm having to catch up--I was probably not even mature enough to understand YA novels until I was 21 or so I was very late on that stage of social development.
Kitty, I'm glad I wasn't the only one. I swear, your parents were leaving the same books lying around that my parents were! Plus, there wasn't nearly as much good MG and almost no YA available back then. (dark ages, folks, dark ages...) And the YA there was, was grim. At 11, who really "gets" The Outsiders? But Stranger in a Strange Land--that was fun!
And I don't even remember the orgies, so yeah, I agree. Kids tune it out if they don't get it.
Anyway...
And I don't even remember the orgies, so yeah, I agree. Kids tune it out if they don't get it.
Anyway...