{"id":2091,"date":"2008-02-21T03:01:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-21T03:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=2091"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:28:31","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:28:31","slug":"things-i-learned-from-kids-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=2091","title":{"rendered":"Things I Learned from Kids’ Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’re like me–and you probably are, if you read our blog regularly–you’re flummoxed by the more-than-occasional lofty attitudes of those who see children’s and YA books as easy-to-write, easy-to-digest pabulum for people who haven’t quite graduated to the level of reading or writing grown-up books.<\/p>\n

So I made this list. It’s by no means exhaustive, but I couldn’t stop thinking about all the memorable words and ideas and history and everything else that I encountered for the first time in kids’ books and teen books–and not just when I was young, either. And just to put this out there, I do read grown-up books, and I do write grown-up short stories. So there. <\/p>\n

As a kid, without those kids’ books I wouldn’t have learned about dodecahedrons or tesseracts. Those books taught me what a veruca was, and what makes somebody a twit. I learned the words of Waltzing Matilda and what to do with the rocks in my head. I learned that I can’t catch diabetes from a friend. I learned about the legend of Welsh Prince Madog<\/a>. <\/p>\n

As a teen, I learned more about Wales, its legends, and what the Welsh language looks like. I learned that guys name their guy-parts. I learned that the slender beauty ideal was 5’6″ and size 6 (as opposed to size 0). And I learned that, yes, you can get tired of puns.<\/p>\n

As an adult, I’ve learned even more. I’ve gotten glimpses into others’ lives, imaginary and somehow truer than fiction. I’ve learned what it’s like to live on an Alaskan crab boat, or in a 1960s Malaysian town, or in early Britain, or in a rich girl’s snowboarding shoes. I’ve learned about fairy tales I never read as a child.<\/p>\n

(And here, in case you’re interested, is a list of the books I made reference to: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster; A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Twits by Roald Dahl; an unknown book about Waltzing Matilda which I can’t track down; What to Do with the Rocks in Your Head by Michael Scheier; You Can’t Catch Diabetes from a Friend by Lynne Kipnis; A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L’Engle; Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence; Forever by Judy Blume; the Sweet Valley High books by Francine Pascal; the Xanth books by Piers Anthony; Lucy the Giant by Sherri Smith; Town Boy by Lat; The Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer and Warriors of Camlann by N.M. Browne; Girl Overboard by Justina Chen Headley; and Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale.<\/p>\n

What have you learned from children’s books?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’re like me–and you probably are, if you read our blog regularly–you’re flummoxed by the more-than-occasional lofty attitudes of those who see children’s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,10],"class_list":["post-2091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-af","tag-views"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2091"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4738,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2091\/revisions\/4738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}