Institute of Children's Literature

A traveling salesman from Chittenango, New York, returned home from his trips with fanciful stories he made up to delight his children. He failed as a businessman, but L. Frank Baum’s Wonderful Wizard of Oz,

published when he was 44, won him lasting fame and led to 13 more books about his enchanted land. But most successful authors create their stories, at least in part, with material drawn from their personal experiences. Fantasy, imagination, hard facts, snippets of conversations, and personality quirks are all coin of the writer’s realm. Charlotte’s Web was inspired by a cobweb in E.B. White’s barn in West Brooklin, Maine, inhabited by a spider he endowed with endearing human qualities.

While a spider in a web was only a point of departure for White, Mark Twain drew heavily on his boyhood in Hannibal, Missouri, to create the scenes and settings along the river as well as the characters and

personalities that populate The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Life on the Mississippi. Louisa May Alcott went to work at age 15 as a governess and household servant to help support her family. At night, she wrote stories. She sent her manuscripts to a publisher who suggested that Miss Alcott write a story based on her childhood. The book captured the hearts of girls everywhere, and Little Women became one of the most successful children’s books ever published.

Writers of articles and other forms of nonfiction often make use of their hobbies, interests, and even their work experiences as the bases for interesting expositions. One of the outstanding examples of this kind of writing is Science Experiments You Can Eat, written by a junior high school science teacher. It has been a steady seller since 1962.

Whatever your age, education, and occupation—wherever and however you live—finding the best time and place to write is the student writer’s first assignment. Whether you’re a “morning person” or a “night person” and whether you write on the kitchen table or at your own desk are much less important than having your own time and place to write. That time and place then become your creative center and yours alone—a place of one’s own.

More than 500 publishers of books and 600 publishers of magazines

related to children buy manuscripts from freelance writers. Of course, all manuscripts must be “right on target” and written and presented according to the publishers’ specifications if they are to be considered. While more than 5,300 different children’s books are published every year, children’s magazines consume thousands of stories and articles every month! Some have many subscribers. Boys’ Life has 1,300,000; Scholastic’s magazines total 7,800,000; and Highlights for Children goes into 3,000,000 homes every month! With their voracious appetites, magazines require a lot of writing to keep them well fed. Freelancers supply most of it.

One of the most appealing aspects of writing is the extraordinary flexibility it offers; you can write anywhere, anytime you wish. All you need is some way to capture the words.

One famous author (before she was famous) wrote in longhand on a board propped up on the steering wheel of her car—which was parked in her driveway, locked. It was the only way she could get away from the children, the pets, and the telephone. She bought a precious hour every day with this arrangement, and with it, Jean Kerr produced the best-selling novel Please Don’t Eat the Daisies.

No matter how or when you write, or what you write about, there’s always a waiting market for good juvenile writing. See for yourself; go to your library and skim a dozen books and magazines for children and young adults. Ask yourself: If I had individual instruction from a real professional, could I learn to write as well as that? If your answer is yes and if you have the necessary aptitude to qualify, you may wish to consider the Institute’s course, Writing for Children and Teenagers. Our students and alumni have already written and published more than 11,000 books, articles, and stories.

Writing Can Be Highly Rewarding

The rewards of writing begin with the recognition that you’ve succeeded in expressing yourself on paper the way you want to be read—first, by you, and second, by your instructor. At the outset, those rewards may seem almost unattainable. But once you start satisfying your own standards—and your instructor’s—you’ll be ready to learn the next steps: how to find appropriate markets and how to offer these editors and publishers your work.

That first sweet letter of acceptance from a publisher will never be rivaled by anything you’re likely to get in the mail—except, possibly, your publisher’s check. No matter how many checks follow that one, and no matter how big they may be, none will be as important.

The last, and perhaps the greatest, of these early successes is seeing your name and your words in print. For most writers, this is the realization of a cherished dream, a confirmation of their own faith in their ability, and the beginning of a life in writing.

Karen Hesse, author of Out of the Dust, achieved a great triumph in 2000, eight years after graduating from the Institute: She won the Newbery Medal, America’s highest honor in children’s fiction.

There are special joys to be found in writing for children and teenagers that no other category of writing can offer you. The light your words bring to a child’s face, the giggles and laughter your stories tickle out of a youngster’s imagination—these are experiences you’ll treasure forever. And if your words succeed in reaching and touching a teenager, offering understanding in that often confusing world of adolescence, you’ll find gratification beyond measure.

Although for many years the cinder maids of the publishing world, books

and magazines for children and teenagers have finally emerged as Cinderellas:

• Publishers’ sales of children’s books have multiplied more than seven times since 1980—from $211 million to $1.954 billion in 2000. That represents nearly $3 billion in retail sales!
• Magazines for and about children have exploded from a handful just a generation ago to more than 600 today. And publishers’ sales of juvenile paperbacks rose from $336,000,000 in 1988 to nearly $900,000,000 in 2000.
• While enrollments in grades K-8 are expected to increase, the boom is shifting to young adults: the number of children ages 10 to 19 enrolled in public schools increased from 34 million in 1991 to more than 41 million in 2000.

The reason for this dramatic growth is the population boom, or “boomlet,” produced by the baby boomers, as well as the positive attitudes they have developed, as parents, toward reading and education. The result has produced an eager audience with money to spend.

Publishers in the juvenile market have also reacted favorably, from a freelance writer’s point of view, and they continue to be receptive to fresh, new material that meets their specifications.

Of course, no matter who submits a manuscript for consideration—an established author or an unpublished writer—professional standards apply. These are the standards you learn at the Institute.

If you have the desire and the aptitude to write for children and young adults, we have a truly superior course of instruction and a highly qualified instructor to work with you one-on-one. We teach you how to write—and how to get your writing published. As a result, our course offers you the best prospects for success as a student and, later, as a freelance writer.

Sources: Publishers Weekly, U.S. Dept. of Education, Association of American Publishers, and Book Industry Study Group.

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