Pages for Littles

Hi, this is Amanda. I’m eleven. I guess that even when the teenagers get a section of their own, probably I’ll fit more in with the little kids than with the teenagers. I don’t know for sure.

Anyhow, the reason I’m writing here is that I wanted to have a chance to write or something. Well, okay. I was reading a really good book, called The Penderwicks, by Jeanne Birdsall. And then I was thinking about writing stories, and how I have wanted to write a book like that. I’ve wanted to be an author for a long time.

I know that there are other parts who also want to be writers. Some of them have spent a lot of time writing. I have too, but not very recently, because mostly I’m just inside.

What I want to write is the kind of stories I like to read. The ones like The Saturdays, by Elizabeth Enright, or the Ramona books by Beverley Cleary, or books like those. The ones where it is just people who are living their lives, and nothing except for living their lives happens. There isn’t some dangerous adventure, and there isn’t too much of the stupid kissing stuff.

Also, books where everything is pretty much ok, and the kids who are the main characters have parents who aren’t mean to them, and they’re not dealing with problems like on some after school special.

I don’t know why they don’t write very many books like that any more. It seems like they used to do a lot of books like that, and then they stopped or they started thinking that girls who are eleven or so wanted to read books that were all full of kissing and worrying about boys and bodies and stuff like that. Or else only little kids wanted to read plain old ordinary books.

So I was thinking about writing a book for myself. And then I will post it on here, or even, I will write it on here.

They say you are supposed to write just what you know, and I guess I don’t really know what it’s like to be a normal happy kid. But I can imagine what it would be like.

Here is my idea. I will write a story like the kind I want to read, except it will be about a system like the one where I live. And then, if there are any people who also want to read about that, they can read what I write, and we can talk about the story.

So it would be just like one of those books I like, but written for other kids my age who live inside. I think probably some of the older ones in the system will help with things like they will help me to figure out how to make the story work. Also, I will do a little experiment with making it turn into a bunch of pages. Let me see if it works.