So, as I mentioned before, I’ve had the great privilege of working on the process of fiction and the importance of storytelling with a busload of some wicked fabulous middle school kids from Apple Valley. Now, given the time constraints of the middle-school day and the limited duration of a single week, there’s a limit in the details of what I can actually impart to these children. I can’t really teach story writing in a week. Maybe someone with more skill can, but we all have to be honest with what we can do. Instead, I spend a week encouraging story writing. I’m a fiction cheerleader. I give them things to think about and time in which to process and I turn them loose. But mostly, what I do for an entire week is tell kids again and again that their stories matter.
And they do matter.
I tell them that storytelling is our birthright as human beings, and that a single story can change a life, can change a community and a country and the entire world. Indeed, stories change the world every day. Ask anyone you like.
Now, I’ll be writing about this some more, and going into a little more detail about what I saw and how the kids responded but in the meantime, I’d like to turn your attention to this website – – no, go click on it now, I can wait.
See what I mean?
Scroll down and read . . . . oh, man, there’s a bunch. “The House on Cherrytree Lane” and “The Wonderful Misadventures of Serge Macalister”, and “The Secret Passage,” and many many more than I can think of right now. I’m so proud of these children, I can hardly tell you.
Kelly Barnhill 