A Quote by Robert Munsch
If you don't remember childhood and you idealize it, you can't write books for kids because they're not real. Kids pick that up.
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I think I write for reluctant readers. Of course I want everyone to enjoy my books, but if the kids in the back row who normally don't pick up a book are engaged with what I'm writing, along with the kids who are big readers anyway, then I really feel like I've done my job.
Childhood is just this amazing place, and in my books, I was trying to express my concern about childhood being eroded. You have kids' TV programs being interrupted by terrorist attacks, and kids are exposed to so much these days.
A lot of people who don't write for kids think it's easy, because they think kids aren't as smart as they are, or that you have to dumb down what you would normally write for kids. But I think you have to work harder when you write for kids, to make sure every word is right, that it's there for the right reason.
I don't have a life, really. I take my kids to school, and I go home, and I write. Then I go pick my kids up, make them dinner, put them to bed, and write some more.
You don't need to have kids to write a good book for kids. I don't want my kids to see themselves in my books. Their lives should be their lives.
What was on the agenda was school and social life and those kinds of things. So I was the middle of five kids. So I had the great advantage of being able to play up to the older kids and play down to the younger kids and I think that's part of what propelled me to become a teacher at some point in my life. But it was a comfortable childhood. It was a privileged childhood.
I remember really bonding with the first generation kids, the Chinese Canadian kids, and in high school bonding with the Latin kids and the East Indian kids. It was very interesting because it made me open to lots of musical sounds.
I think kids are natural actors. You watch most kids; if they don't have a toy, they'll pick up a stick and make a toy out of it. Kids will daydream all the time.
I have the life of Riley. I take my kids to school, do a bit of work in the afternoon, pick my kids up, microwave a meal, hang out with my kids, and work for a couple of hours.
Kids love to be silly, they love to laugh, so I think it was natural for my kids to like the sort of books that I write - and it's the only kinds of books I'm capable of writing.
The one thing about kids is that you never really know exactly what they're thinking or how they're seeing. After writing about kids, which is a little bit like putting the experience under a magnifying glass, you realize you have no idea how you thought as a kid. I've come to the conclusion that most of the things that we remember about our childhood are lies. We all have memories that stand out from when we were kids, but they're really just snapshots. You can't remember how you reacted because your whole head is different when you stand aside.
Now I don't really write for adults or kids - I don't write for kids, I write about them. I think you need to do that, otherwise you end up preaching down.
Because I haven't been in a band, I wasn't in that zone. I'm just a mom that needs to pick up her kids from school. I just don't remember what it is you do, what you wear. Even just doing photo sessions where you think, "I just don't remember how to do this."
I refuse to censor myself and kids will find their own way to my books and to all of the books that matter to them. As I write more honestly more kids will make their way toward me. And in subverting their repressive parents kids will learn the value of subverting the repressive nature of all authority figures.
I don't want to do children's music. I write kids songs, but the kids songs I write are for my kids - like when I'm putting them to bed. We sing some song that we made up but I don't want to make a record like that.
Kids are a great analogy. You want your kids to grow up, and you don't want your kids to grow up. You want your kids to become independent of you, but it's also a parent's worst nightmare: That they won't need you. It's like the real tragedy of parenting.
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