Young Writers in Books for Young Readers

At this point, the blogosphere’s kerfuffle over Pat Murphy’s middle grade novel The Wild Girls is such old news I’m not even going to touch it. If you’re really interested, you can read Paul Kincaid’s review, which led to Literaticat’s response, which prompted commentary at Shaken and Stirred, Chasing Ray, and Torque Control, among many others, I’m sure, including Paul Kincaid's personal blog.

What’s important here is the flurry of discussion led me to seek out The Wild Girls myself. And I’m glad I did. I won’t count it among the best books I’ve read all year, much less my favorites of all time. I think it will find a fairly niche audience, actually – probably mostly girls, and not the Clique crowd at that; the bookish; the oddballs. But to those young target readers, I believe it may become a very special book indeed.

To back up, The Wild Girls is the story of two 12-year-old girls, Joan and Fox, who are a bit oddball themselves. They become close friends, sharing a love of imaginative play and writing. After winning a short story competition together, they are encouraged by Verla Volante, a professional writer, to join a summer writing workshop. Meanwhile, they cope with the changes in their individual families.

That’s the surface. The subtext (as Verla Volante would say) is the way writing positively changes the girls’ interactions in the world. By writing, and applying writing techniques to their relationships and actions, the girls become more confident in taking risks; grow closer to their families and friends by asking questions; and learn to see the world from others’ point of view.

It’s a fairly quiet book, focusing on the small ways Joan and Fox’s lives change as a result of their pursuit of writing. And for that reason, it’s also very empowering. By daring to ask questions, Joan gets her mother to openly discuss her marital problems. By putting her emotions into stories, she opens a new line of communication with her difficult father. Writing doesn’t win Joan popularity or solve her family’s problems, but it brings her closer to the people in her life, even as it helps her better understand herself.

So, why do I think The Wild Girls will win a special place in some readers’ hearts? To answer that, I have to climb in the time machine and set the dial for the mid-1980s.

I loved books from the get-go, thanks to my parents, but it was thanks to my second grade teacher that I loved writing, too. Ms. K was always giving us one-sentence story starters on a ditto sheet, and my stories inevitably overflowed the page and filled up several more. At the top of each one, she wrote, “Excellent!” That was the year I decided to become a writer.

A novelist, to be specific. I blame that on a middle grade book called Mom, You’re Fired!, by Nancy K. Robinson (Scholastic, 1981). In it, two girls are writing their Best-Selling Novel, which they plan to sell for millions of dollars. Of course, months of work have only gotten them half-way through the first sentence. It reads, “Little did Lady Penelope Pembleton-Harkness know that lurking in the shadow of the pomegranate bush…” My own eight-year-old noveling attempt only got me slightly farther (five pages!), but the seeds were sown.

I found further inspiration in Stage Fright, by Ann M. Martin (Holiday House, 1984), in which three girls try to set a world record with their several-hundred-stanza poem, “The Saga of Barbie and Ken.” Unfortunately, when they finish it, they mail their only copy not to the Guinness Book of World Records, but to movie star Sir Alec Guinness. Didn’t matter to me. Here were more girls my own age writing!

Harriet, the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh (Delacorte, 1964) was probably my next major inspiration. It feels almost cliché to cite Harriet. Wasn’t Harriet every young writer’s role model? Didn’t everyone long to fill notebooks full of clever observations on life? It took me considerably longer than Harriet to reach fourteen spiral-bound notebooks. But spiral-bound notebooks are still the only blank books I’ll use.

Finally, there’s Look Through My Window, by Jean Little (Harper & Row, 1970). Emily and Kate not only wrote poetry, they had a poetry club. In the attic. How thrilling was that?

Aside from tracing my own obsession with writing as inspired by middle grade literature, I’d like to make this point: Harriet aside, none of these books from my childhood is in print. They aren’t classics. You’ll be lucky to find a tattered copy at your library. But they were good books. Inspiring books. I wouldn’t have remembered them all these years if they hadn’t been so special to me – and, I imagine, all those other young girls who loved to write. I fully expect The Wild Girls will be on a future writer's own list of inspirations someday.

ETA, February 15, 2008: How could I have forgotten Daphne's Book by Mary Downing Hahn? I read this book again and again. A book about individuality and friendship, poverty and mental illness, it centers around two girls assigned to create a children's book together! It was lovely and inspiring - so much so that I tried to write my own mouse fantasy story, like the girls in the book.