Caroline Arnold has been a contributor to Writing It Real, and recently, she sent me an essay about how one of her early children’s books began as gardening observations with her children. We will be posting an excerpt from that book, Wiggle and Waggle, after our current exchange and refresher on the issues involved in writing for children.

Growing A Book
By Caroline Arnold

Wiggle and Waggle gets the prize for the longest gestation period of any of my published books. I began writing stories about Wiggle and Waggle more than thirty years ago when my children were in preschool. Our family had recently moved from our tiny apartment in New York City to an old farmhouse in the country. One of the attractions of rural life was the chance to grow our own food. We picked apples in the orchard, tapped the maple trees for sap to make syrup, built a chicken coop, which we filled with fifty baby chicks we ordered from Sears, and behind the barn, in what had once been the barnyard, we dug a garden in the deep, rich earth. As we turned over the ground to prepare it for planting, we watched the worms wiggle back into the soil, after being so rudely exposed to the sunlight. Without the worms to aerate the soil and recycle the plant residue, our garden would not have been nearly so successful.

That first summer we put in tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, and zucchini. The plants sprang up practically overnight and I soon learned how to make pickles to use up the glut of cucumbers and zucchini. Our tomatoes hung heavy on the vines in huge clusters, but because we started the garden late, they had not yet ripened by the first frost in September. So, following instructions from our gardening book, we wrapped them in newspaper and brought them inside — all five hundred of them! They slowly turned red and we enjoyed the ripe fruit until Thanksgiving.

Our gardening knowledge came from reading books and trial and error. Each summer the plot grew larger, requiring more fence to keep the woodchucks at bay. One of the joys of winter was poring over seed catalogues with their colorful photos and hundreds of varieties of seeds. Should we plant blue lake or runner beans? White or red Swiss chard? Cherry, salad, or beefsteak tomatoes? Summer or winter squash? We chose the Little Sweetie pumpkin, good for both pies and jack-o-lanterns. The pumpkin vines always had minds of their own, climbing over the fence and trailing off into the field. Luckily woodchucks didn’t seem to like them.

 We learned to follow the cycle of the seasons, planting cool weather crops as soon as we could work the ground. The first hot spell always provoked the lettuce to bolt, turning it bitter and telling us it was time to pull it out and plant summer vegetables. In the fall, we left our brussels sprouts in the ground to be picked after the first frost, which turned them sweet and mild. Almost everything we planted grew with little help from us, aside from occasional weeding. Our luck was the fertile garden soil, inhabited by industrious worms.

About the same time that I was learning to garden, I was immersing myself in the world of children’s books. Every two weeks, my son and daughter and I went to the library and checked out piles of books, which I read aloud before naps and at bedtime. We all loved the stories and pictures and I began to think that perhaps I could write stories too. Using our garden as inspiration, I created the characters of Wiggle and Waggle (then called Wilbur and Ronald.). I discovered that writing for children was harder than it looked. The original stories of Wiggle and Waggle were too long, not well connected, and the characters didn’t always motivate the action. I put the stories away and turned to other projects, but every now and then I would get them out and work on them again.

Like the seasons, my writing career has also come full cycle. I started writing when my own children were small and mainly focused on books for young readers. As my children grew up, I shifted to writing more for older readers. My son and daughter are now grown and have their own children, who have inspired me to go back to writing for younger readers. As I got out Wiggle and Waggle once again, I reshaped the manuscript into five stories for beginning readers. One part that never changed was having the worms “write” words with the shape of their tunnels.

I always envisioned Wiggle and Waggle as a collection of short stories, although the original five stories were longer and had different themes. Over the years, I gradually changed the stories. At one point, I took one episode, in which the worms go exploring outside the garden, and turned it into a rebus. At another point, I tried the story as a picture book, turning the final scene into a birthday celebration. It was not until I started to work on the stories in an early reader format and to focus on the themes of friendship and the value of hard work that the stories finally came together as a book.

Finally, after thirty-one years, those stories have become published. I hope that children will think that the stories of Wiggle and Waggle are fun, but that they will also learn about the value of friendship and a job well done. Perhaps, after reading these stories, children will also gain a new appreciation of worms and be motivated to learn more about them. The writing of Wiggle and Waggle may illustrate the value of perseverance — or perhaps it was just one of those garden plants that didn’t mature in the first year, but required more time to reach its peak.

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Sheila
What is the definition of the young reader?

Caroline
The children’s book market ranges from board books for babies to young adult novels, and sometimes this whole group is referred to as books for young readers. Generally, though, a young reader is a child in the early stages of learning to read. Usually, this is between kindergarten and third grade. Books for this age group are often called early readers or easy-read books and have limited text and short chapters.

Sheila
What are the guidelines and restrictions when an author writes for writing for that audience?

Caroline
When writing an early reader such as Wiggle and Waggle, it is important to use short, direct sentences — the shorter the better — and easily decoded words of one or two syllables. More difficult words can be included but only if they are defined or understood in context. Contractions are generally not allowed. In a chapter book, each chapter should function as a separate story as well as contributing the overall story line and theme of the book. All the chapters should be about the same length.

Sheila
What do you find the most challenging?

Caroline
The hardest part of writing an early reader is keeping the text lively and moving forward while staying within the confines of short sentences and short words. One solution is to use as much dialogue as possible. I try to create engaging characters that children will identify with. Giving Wiggle and Waggle distinct and separate personalities was a challenge. Because there is little room for description (that is taken care of in the illustrations) character development has to be through actions. Wiggle is the impetuous one while Waggle is the calm, problem solver.

Sheila
What is the most fun?

Caroline
Children in the early grades are full of curiosity and eager to learn about everything. The fun part of writing for this age group is that the whole world is new to them so almost every subject can be exciting.

Sheila
Can you give us an anecdote from your experience shaping manuscripts for this group?

Caroline
My first published book, Five Nests, was an easy-read book about bird families. I have always been a bird watcher. My husband, a biologist at UCLA, studies birds in his research, and in a class he was teaching on animal behavior, he was discussing parental strategies in birds and their link to differences in plumage in males and females. This is an interesting theoretical question for college students, but in a more simplified form, I thought it would be a perfect subject for younger children. My point was to show that in nature there are many kinds of families, just as with humans. So, with the help of my husband I picked five examples: robins (both parents care for the babies); red-wing blackbirds (only the mother cares for the babies); rheas (a South American relative of the ostrich in which only the father takes care of the babies); Mexican jays (a species in which the young birds help their parents with the next nest of babies); and, finally, a cowbird (which lays its eggs in other birds nests and lets them care for the babies.) At the end of the book I wrote, “There are many different ways that birds care for their babies. Each way is a good way.” My main challenge in writing this book was reducing the massive amount of information I collected about each bird to a few essential words and keeping those words within the vocabulary of a second grade child.

Sheila
Do you have any experience using your know how concerning writing for young readers for writing adult literacy materials?

Caroline
My books for younger children are sometimes used in ESL classes in high school, but I don’t specifically write them for that use.

Sheila
Can you share the names of resources and organizations those interested in this market might explore?

Caroline
The Society of Book Writers and Illustrators is the best resource for anyone who wants to write for the children’s market. Through its national conferences, regional events and workshops, bi-monthly newsletter and website, you can find out almost anything you want to know.

If you write nonfiction, I recommend a blog, Interesting Nonfiction for Kids with daily contributions from a variety of children’s nonfiction writers.

Another website with industry information is Harold Underdown’s Purple Crayon, which also has an email list notifying you of updates.

Sheila
What else would you like to tell us?

Caroline
I am currently working on a new book about Wiggle and Waggle. In this set of stories, they leave the garden and go off on an exciting adventure! In the meanwhile, if you have kids or are a teacher, you can go to the Wiggle and Waggle page at www.charlesbridge.com for a downloadable activity kit of wormy fun and music for Wiggle and Waggle’s gardening song.

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Here is an excerpt from Caroline’s book, Wiggle and Waggle (Charlesbridge, 2007):

A Digging Song

Wiggle and Waggle were worms.
They lived in the garden.
All day long they dug in the dirt.
They slid between the beets.
They looped around the carrots.
They pushed under the peas.
Their tunnels gave the plants room to grow.
“This is hard work,” moaned Wiggle.
“We will never be done.”
“Let’s sing as we dig,” said Waggle.
Wiggle sang the high notes.
Waggle sang the low notes.
We wiggle and waggle, squiggle and squirm.
Digging in dirt is the life of a worm.
We dig and we sing all day long,
Our wiggly, waggly, gardening song.
They dug long tunnels,
short tunnels,
fat tunnels,
and thin tunnels.
Soon all the garden rows were done.
“What a good song,” said Wiggle.
“It made our work go faster.”