Representation of children as published Authors
Have you ever wondered why there are not many titles written and or illustrated by children in the books market? Well, I have. Since I am an experienced grade school educator, loyal fan, children’s advocate, and now an aspiring book publisher, I felt the responsibility to uncover the answer to this question. At the beginning of my search, I was not certain if there was a significant amount of books in this market niche that I was overlooking somehow as a consumer. It is hard to believe that there would not be numerous published stories from kids, who are indeed natural storytellers. Children are known for their vivid imagination and creativity. I believe that in this immense and broad business of books, there should be a vast representation of this talented and valuable crowd; plus, isn’t it important for kids to read books not only for kids but by kids?
Books written by children are not easy to find. The most comprehensive data is found in List of books written by children or teenagers, Wikipedia, where most of the authors are over the age of thirteen and up to twenty-one. Taking the names of authors that were published at the age of twelve or earlier from that list and adding a few from other sources such as blogs, I came up with a total number of thirty authors. Only about thirty young writers were published in almost a century from 1927 to 2021; a very scarce number taking in consideration that during 2020, reported on Number of writers and authors in the United States from 2011 to 2020 there were over 44.2 thousand surveyed writers and authors working in the United States alone.
Impact on children
Often, children feel that there is no value to put great effort in writing, if there will be no more satisfaction than a school grade or if they are lucky, a teacher’s or family recognition. I encountered comments from kids that clearly express their agony for being neglected the opportunity to publish their voices out to the world. Young writers are motivated to improve their writing skills when they start considering the opinion of an audience. When they know that readers have expectations about what they are writing, they will write with a purpose.
Ishita Katyal, gave a speech at TEDx: Experiences of a 12 year old author, were she spoke about her journey as a young writer, her thoughts, feelings, struggles and achievements. Ishita said that she wondered why she couldn’t use her writing to make a difference in the world. I also found Joshua T. Jones, an amazing 10-year old author, who expressed that his motivation was to inspire others to avoid bullying at his school. So much insight and inspiration from these young, brave minds!
In Young Writers as Critical Readers, a journal article published by the National Council of Teachers of English, Thomas Newkirkt highlights the importance for young readers to write stories of their own. Based on his study, this practice supports critical thinking and evaluative skills, and improves the concept children have about written stories.
When young readers see themselves represented, they are motivated to write their own stories. Schools and libraries should be well supplied with a high inventory of books for children by children. These books should even have a special location where they are highlighted, promoted, and easy to be found. In a blog post at The Why Not Books website where they were presenting the book of a young author, a child had emailed the author saying: ” It’s my favorite book. I’ve read it five times… I did a book report about it for school… I made a sculpture of Blue, the water dragon. Here’s a photo… Can’t wait for the sequel…”.
In order to make this market niche of young authors grow, children need to be guided into getting a better understanding of how books are written by common people and that they can do it as well. They should also be given an audience to write to, but more importantly encouragement to pursue having their titles published. Publishers should open doors to this group of creative storytellers and give them support throughout the process.