March 2008

Why I Write for Children

I write about children and for children because kids inspire me. I have always loved kids. And I remember a lot about being one myself.

I have many, many crystal-clear memories of things that happened between the ages of three and eleven. I remember the games that me and Lisa, my older sister, played in our bunk beds at night (that's us in the picture). I can tell you the first and last names of at least half of my Kindergarten class. And I can recount entire after-school play dates from that period. Here’s one:

When I was five or six, my friend Erica invited me over to her big yellow house on the edge of Linden Hills park. I rode the school bus home with her. Her mom answered the door and said, “Hello Stephanie. I bet you’re surprised I’m speaking English.” She said this because she had been coming to our Kindergarten class to teach us words in German, and she would only speak German. I still remember one of the words she taught us: Apfelbaum. It means apple tree.

Anyway, after Erica’s mom surprised me with her native English, Erica and I went to her room. She pulled out her stash of Halloween candy from under her bed. Mind you, this was September. She offered me the candy, and I asked,

“Is it still good?” At my house, Halloween candy didn’t last past the first week of November, so I had never tested the outer limits of candy freshness.

“Oh yes,” Erica said. She bit the stem off a candy corn pumpkin and showed me the bright orange middle as proof. “See?”

Then Erica asked her mom if we could have ice cream and she said yes, and once her mom was out of the kitchen Erica began scooping two huge portions of orange sherbet into bowls. Her mom came back into the room and was like, “Oh no you don’t. That’s way too much,” and made Erica scoop a lot back into the ice cream bucket.

I don't know why I remember all of these details, but I do.

After age eleven, things get a little foggy. For instance, I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday. It might’ve been a turkey sandwich because I like turkey sandwiches, but I can’t be sure. And when I meet someone new I try to trap their name in my mind but it nearly always escapes. I once saw a picture of myself as an adult wearing a sweater of which I had absolutely no recollection. So that’s my memory now.

I recall a lot about being a kid, and those memories haunt me in the best of ways. And that is, in part, why I write for children.