Blog Tour Interview with MarshaCasper Cook

Please welcome award winning author, Nancy Stewart to the blog today. Her new book, Katrina and Winter: Partners in Courage is released and she is touring with Pump Up Your Book in a fun and exciting virtual book tour. I am thrilled to have her guest post here about writing for children. Her words are full of wisdom for those of us who love to write.

My Way into the Hearts of Kids
Nancy Stewart
Katrina and Winter:  Partners in Courage

With a blog named Writing and Other Ways into the Heart, I had my answer for what to write for this guest post. An author of children’s books needs to be in tune with kids’ needs and emotions. How does one do that?

The most important answer to the question lies within one’s own heart.  We must know right from wrong, basic values children need and positive role modeling to name but a few.  Only when we are quite convinced all this is well and truly in place within us can we dare to instruct.

We need to know children.  Their hopes. Their dreams.  Their fears.  Their frustrations.  If we are going to address their inner most psyches, and we as authors, do this with our words, we must be careful to honor those feelings and to never belittle or minimize them.  We have to be true to the children we are trying to reach.

Now this does not have to be done as a sad, slow-moving dirge. Indeed, quite the opposite. Embedded in our sweet, scary, interesting, adventurous or belly-laughing books should be nuggets of human truth. The same notion that good teachers call implicit curriculum. Live it. Model it. Be it. 

Can we as authors do this?  Carefully, thoughtfully, sensitively, humanely, we can guide our young readers.  If we are successful, we leave the child better for having read our book. S/he has grown and, in a tiny way, has matured because of us.  What else can we ask for as an author?

Nancy is the bestselling and award winning author of the four Bella and Britt Series books for children:  One Pelican at a Time (eighteen weeks on Amazon Bestselling List), Sea Turtle Summer, Bella Saves the Beach and Mystery at Manatee Key. All are published by Guardian Angel Publishing. 

One Pelican at a Time and Nancy were featured in the PBS Tampa special, GulfWatch.  Pelican has won the Literary Classics Seal of Approval, Readers Favorite Five Star Award and was nominated for a Global eBook Award.

Her travels take her extensively throughout the world, most particularly Africa. She is US chair of a charity in Lamu, Kenya, that places girls in intermediate schools to allow them to further their education.  Nancy is a frequent speaker at conferences, including the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.

She and her husband live in Tampa and St. Louis.

http://www.nancystewartbooks.com