Children's Literature Workshop

The Children’s Lit Writing Workshop, held September 11-13, 2009, was a great success, thanks to our two presenters, Meg Lippert and Rosanne Parry, and to twenty-one enthusiastic participants.

Meg and Rosanne brought two distinctly different but wonderfully complementary perspectives and styles to the event, and every single participant brought a unique voice to the open mike on Sunday morning.

And my, wasn’t the food good!

Children’s Lit Writing Workshop
A Sampling of Composite Compositions:
(when, where, who, what, how, why, title)

THE VIRTUE OF NAPPING

It was time
For huckleberries to ripen.
Beneath the back porch
In a hollowed divot in cool soil,
Jonathan Blanche drove the blue Corvette
Recklessly down the center line,
Groggily.
Why couldn’t she understand that he
Did it
Because he loved her
So deeply?

IN THE EVENT OF SOMETHING WILD

Back when
Birds were dinosaurs,
In what seemed to be the middle
Of nowhere,
Tim, the river guide, stepped out
Of his truck
To make a phone call.
He climbed one slippery rung
After another, hands greased
With fear,
Soles cramped against the cold metal,
With vigor and glee.
Since it was his first time
It would always sear a scar
In his heart.

ALWAYS WEAR A JACKET

During the dew-laden morning,
On a sandy beach studded
With rocks that led out to the sea,
A well-dressed grandmother
From Brooklyn
Wriggled and shook and crawled

Up toward the sun.
Lazily,
Because she couldn’t think
Of anything else to say.

THE BIG IDEA

When the robins first sang their way
Into his not-quite-awake dream world,
An igloo seemed out of place in the
Amazon jungle. A beaver
Perched back on his tail, looking
What next to do,
Whistled bravely while glancing
Side to side, every step of the way,
Half-heartedly,
Without grace, because
It wanted to see the world.

IT’S A NEW DAY

The late afternoon sun
Slanted through the thick forest of trees,
Illuminating a small clump of
Fiddlehead ferns at the bottom
Of the cold and black pool, where the
Shafts of sunlight drowned.
Molly sported a perm that made her look
Perpetually alarmed.
As she looked up
Into the starry black bowl of night,
A star winked.
Hesitantly,
As if being watched,
Although no one was nearby,
Because
The bottle was empty.