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“5 Things About Me as a Young Reader”
by Michael Northrop
1) As a young reader, I wasn’t much of a young reader. I am dyslexic and got off to a slow start. I repeated second-grade and spent the second year in a small special ed. class where they had me read the same few Dick and Jane books over and over again. It wasn’t exactly thrilling reading, but it worked well. I’m pretty sure it took advantage of the high degree of brain plasticity at that age to retrain my neural pathways. Though if you asked my teacher, she just would have said, ‘Practice makes perfect.’
2) And that may be, but the first thing I wanted to practice was the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. This was way before World of Warcraft or other advanced computer versions. D&D was made entirely of words, either spoken or written, and as I became more immersed in the game, I began reading the books. I poured over The Player’s Handbook, The Monster Manual, and though it was technically forbidden for a mere player like me, the impressive, tome-like Dungeon Master’s Guide. I wasn’t reading for the fun of reading, exactly. I was looking for shortcuts and clues and information, anything that could make me a better player and my characters more powerful. Nonetheless, I found myself spellbound (so to speak) by those books for hours at a time.
3) The first book I remember reading for fun was also largely because of D&D. My brother, Matt, was a voracious reader and had named his top character after a character from a book. It was the ultimate compliment in our world (I’d named my top character after a Norse god!), and I had to know how a mere book—like the ones they made us read in school—could be cool enough to cross over into the game that dominated our own fiercely guarded after-school hours. The book was The Book of Three, the first installment in Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydian series, and after reading and enjoying it, I understood why Matt named his ranger Gwydion.
4) The next big book for me actually was assigned in school: Watership Down
Looking Back on CWIM: The 2000 Edition
An Interview with S.E. Hinton...
This edition of CWIM saw the addition of Agents & Art Reps and section devoted to SCBWI Conferences. Among the publishing professionals interviewed: Caldecott Winner Jacqueline Briggs Martin; Allyn Johnston, then editor at Harcourt (who now has her own S&S imprint, Beach Lane Books); YA novelist Francesca Lia Block; SCBWI Executive Director Lin Oliver; Writers House agent Steven Malk; and more than half a dozen others including a feature with the iconic author of The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton who at the time was coming out with her first picture book.
Here's an excerpt from the Q&A by Anne Bowling:
You were 15 when you started writing The Outsiders, and wrote 4 full drafts for the next year and a half before you had the manuscript. Did you have a mentor at that time, or was someone guiding your revisions?
No. I love to write. Actually, The Outsiders was the third book I had written, it was just the first one I had tried to publish. The first two ended up in drawers somewhere--I used characters from them later in other books, but I certainly didn't go back and rework them. Everybody's got to practice.
When I was writing The Outsiders I would go to school and say "Well, I'm writing a book, and this has happened so far, and what should happen next?," 'cause I'd get stuck. Someone would say, "Oh, make the church burn down." And I'd say, "That sounds good, I'll make the church burn down." I was just doing it because I liked doing it.
Because there was very little being published at that time for young adults that included such violent content and emotional depth, were you concerned at all that the book was really pushing the envelope?
No, I wasn't. One reason I wrote it was I wanted to read it. I couldn't find anything that dealt realistically with teenage life. I've always been a good reader, but I wasn't ready for adult books, they didn't interest me, and I was through with all the horse books. If you wanted to read about your peer group, there was nothing to read except Mary Jane Goes to the Prom or
