Almost every summer, I lead a creative writing series for kids at my library, culminating in the production of a literary magazine. They produce the content; I do the typing, scanning, and formatting. We send it to a local printer to do the rest. Each child receives three copies of the magazine. We also add two copies to the library collection and post a PDF on the library website.
I’ve varied the series format a bit from year to year: the number and length of sessions, the age of the kids, the activities, the amount of free time. My modifications are based on lessons learned the year before—lessons learned the hard way. This year went fairly smoothly, though. I’ll still have some lessons to apply next summer, but there were also some things that really worked.
Program Format
Kids had to be entering grades 3 and up. Due to self-selection, the oldest were entering 6th. I capped registration at 30 and set up the room with tables and chairs for 24. Attendance on any given week never exceeded this number.
We had four weekly meetings during the month of July. Each meeting was 90 minutes long. The first 30 to 40 minutes, we did some kind of group activity or writing game. Then kids worked independently. Once they were busy, I called tables up to get a snack. The snacks were simple, if not the most healthy: white corn chips, unsalted pretzels, sandwich cookies, and water. The chips were most popular.
The last 5 to 10 minutes were reserved for cleanup and, on some days, sharing. I had mixed feelings about the sharing. Some kids were eager to share, but I had trouble getting the rest of the class to listen. This is why I’m not a teacher.
Writing Games
The best activities, I found, were the ones that got kids interacting with each other and sometimes even moving around a bit. Ninety minutes is a long time to be sitting and working alone. (NB: None of these games originated with me. If you trawl the web, you’ll find all kinds of variations.)
Plot from a Bag
This was a great icebreaker for our first session. I packed a laundry bag full of ordinary, unrelated objects: a can of split pea soup, a tennis racket, a roll of toilet paper, etc. I began the story, “Once upon a time…” and blindly pulled out an object. The challenge, then, is to somehow incorporate the object into the story. For example, I pulled out a tube of toothpaste, so decided to start our fairy tale with a royal dentist. I then walked around the room with the bag, and everyone took a turn until the bag was empty.
(Idea from Jennifer Knoblock)
Magnetic Poetry
This turned out to be an interesting exercise not only in creativity but in cooperation. Emulating magnetic poetry sets, I printed out a bunch of fun, vivid, and functional words on cardstock. It’s important to have “people, place, and thing” nouns and regular verbs to which you can add “s,” “ed,” or “ing.” I also included adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, pronouns, and articles. You don’t actually need magnets.
Each table got an envelope of words, and their task was to create a poem or story with them. Some groups embraced the activity and tried to use up almost all their words, with great success. Other groups nitpicked or argued. It was definitely interesting to see the “personalities” come out.
Fortunately, Unfortunately
I started this activity by reading Remy Charlip’s classic Fortunately. Even though it’s a picture book, it’s funny and engaging, plus it’s a great example of how to keep a plot moving through changes in a character’s fortune. Afterward, the kids paired up to write their own story. I gave them a chart something like this:
| Fortunately… |
| Unfortunately… |
Fortunately… |
| Unfortunately… |
Fortunately… |
| (etc.) |
(etc.) |
| Fortunately… |
On my charts, I’d actually ended with an “unfortunately,” but the optimist in me prefers to end on an up note. As an aside, it was truly impressive how many ways the kids came up with to kill off their characters…sigh.
Mad Libs
By our fourth session, I was running out of steam, but this was an easy activity to pull off. Ahead of time, I prepared a “Mad Libs” style story-starter of about 100 words, leaving out about a dozen key words. In class, I read off the missing parts of speech, and kids produced their answers on a sheet of notebook paper. Next, I passed out the story-starter worksheets, and the kids filled in the blanks. Then they continued the story.
I missed the group-work element in this activity. Next time, I might prepare two story-starters so that one kid can take my role in reading off the missing parts of speech. Then they can switch off.
Challenges and Lessons Learned
In years past, I’ve dealt with sibling rivalry, girl-boy rivalry, inappropriate behavior, all of which were problems that—whether due to this year’s format or the kids who participated—weren’t an issue this year. But, of course, there were other challenges.
Appropriateness
This was my biggest struggle. I told the kids at the beginning of the program that this wasn’t school and I wasn’t going to ask them to write about particular topics. However, a few kids took this to meant that anything went—especially blood and guts and potty humor.
I didn’t want to be a censor, but there are limits as to what I’m willing to put in a magazine that will be scene by parents, grandparents, my boss, and the Library Board. However, explaining this to the kids in question didn’t seem to make an impression. After all, gory deaths and gross-out humor are popular at any age.
It was when one kid finally said, “Ohhh… you mean it has to be appropriate,” that I realized the word meant something concrete to them. They heard it from parents. They heard it from teachers. Now, they’ll hear it from me, too.
By the way, lest you assume boys were the worst offenders…they weren’t.
Comic Strips
Even though it’s ostensibly a creative writing program, kids were also welcome to draw illustrations and comic strips. A lot of the boys, especially, loved drawing comics. What they don’t love is drawing the boxes themselves.
After the first session, I put together a worksheet that consisted simply of a grid of boxes. No more rulers required, no more lopsided “squares.” Kids could stick to the fun part: filling in the boxes with funny drawings and explosions.
Author Visits
In past summers, we’ve sometimes had an author visit/workshop in place of a literary magazine meeting. Sometimes, we’ve had barely half a dozen attendees. In contrast, last year, when we didn’t offer the lit-mag series, we invited Marlene Targ Brill to do two writing workshops for kids instead. They attracted dozens of kids.
This year, we didn’t offer an author visit during the summer. On the whole, I think this was an acceptable choice. There were a lot of other activities going on, and since the creative writing series was only four sessions long, there wasn’t the opportunity to incorporate it into our schedule. But perhaps next year we can make an author visit a separate event and attract even more kids.
In Conclusion…
That’s it! I always forget what a huge amount of work assembling and formatting the magazine is after the program is over. But no matter how many challenges the summer has offered, it always seems to turn out beautifully—and I start wondering what I’ll do with the kids next year!
