Since the age of four, I've been exploring what I can do with the written word: everything from championing literacy and youth voice to raising awareness about world hunger.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
It is extremely important to me to write for children.
I like to encourage young talented writers to try and help them get published and so forth, but that's all. That's the best I can do.
With my writing, what I want to do is humanize the young people I write about.
If we talk about literacy, we have to talk about how to enhance our children's mastery over the tools needed to live intelligent, creative, and involved lives.
I think probably you can either write for kids, or you can't. That ability to imaginatively be a child and see the world as a child and feel and think like a child - you either have that ability or you don't.
I used to tell my writing students that they must write the books they wished they could come upon - because then the books they hungered and thirsted for would exist.
A major focus of 'Reality Hunger' is appropriation and plagiarism and what these terms mean. I can hardly treat the topic deeply without engaging in it. That would be like writing a book about lying and not being permitted to lie in it.
By the time we're adults, our ideas have solidified. So I wanted to write for a younger audience, who would perhaps love heroes from other cultures.
Reading and writing is so important, and it's something I am really keen to promote. It's something that can be a bit lost these days with so much else going on.
My feeling is that if you can make a big impact on the global literacy problem, you can uplift a big portion of society.
No opposing quotes found.