Confession: As a kid, I never really *loved* to read. (It pains me to admit it.) I always wanted to dance, sing, be in a play or do something else creative instead. (I do love to read now though… funny how we all grow up in different ways.) In school, reading was…. work. Reading was… assigned. Reading seemed… too ‘intense.’ I just wanted to have fun with my wild imagination. (Too bad I didn’t realize that books actually *function* with a wild imagination.) But I always do remember one thing: If a story was written in the form of a play (i.e.: Shakespeare) I was always excited to imagine the characters no matter how complicated the language. 9th grade English class was life-changing for me because of this very reason. And now, mother-of-2 and author Elisabeth Wolf has fabulously cracked a new code for getting middle readers more excited about reading. (You’ll also find that she’s a fine example of a Real-Fab-Mom making her dreams come true AFTER kids.) Good thing I snagged her to write a guest post here… read on and have fun learning all about LuLu In LA LA Land!
A script? A book? BOTH.
As the author of a new middle reader book, Lulu in LA LA Land, I can honestly say the most important reason I wrote my book is because I want kids to READ! I have a son and daughter and a mother who used to be a reading teacher. So, needless to say, as a writer: the pressure was on.
Of course I wanted to tell a fun, creative story. Lulu is a girl living in the hyper-glamorous world of Los Angeles, but she is a not fitter-inner. A fish out of water story – but the water is fashionable, stylish, fancy Hollywood. All I needed was a way kids would want to read about Lulu…a way to make the story unique. My inspiration came from my ten-year-old daughter’s visit to the set of TV show Sonny With A Chance. She was invited to watch an episode being taped. Before she left, the director gave her a copy of the script signed the actors. For the next week, rather than chat about the actors and actresses, she sat up in bed reading and re-reading the script. Late one night, prying it out of her hands, I had my Eureka moment! The format of a screenplay allows pages to look less crowded, dense, and scary. That’s key for young readers leaping from picture books to chapter books.
Wolf with a young fan.
I did some research and found that there’s a precedent for plays to be written for children. Before ubiquitous TV and movies, plays written for children were common. Peter Pan was originally written as a play! I decided I would take the idea that children watch too much on the screen and turn it upside down. Show kids what a movie or TV show looks like before it is made. Lulu gives them a chance to read something like what actors read.
Learning from my own children, I saw that (no matter how much we want to fight it as parents), kids are wiring themselves to digest literature the new fashioned way: quickly! With so much on-line, on iPads, and on phones in fewer and fewer characters, kids want to read in small snipets.
Lulu in LA LA Land is written in scenes, rather than chapters. The quick pace keeps readers engaged. An engaged reader can be a return reader! Among the questions I am most often asked by kids is, “why did you write Lulu as a script?” Rather than explain and preach about the need to read, I give them another answer, which is also totally true: what better way for a kid to tell about her life in LA than in a script?!
TO GRAB A COPY FOR YOUR READERS, CHECK OUT AMAZON.
