Children's Books

As part of the society’s thirtieth annual conference, Mr. Peck, author of A Year Down Yonder and A Long Way from Chicago, described the process of removing the adult presence of the author from stories about children and young adults. He suggested several guidelines when approaching children’s literature including recommending that the stories be more interesting than real life. He reminded authors that adults are marginal to the stories they are writing. He said that stories for children should be about personal empowerment and impart values such as independent thinking and self-reliance, focusing on characters that find their own solutions to problems. close