Writing for Children

Yesterday a little girl came to tea with her mother. She is six years old, and her name is Kate. The first thing that struck me about her is that she looks as though she was drawn by Emma Chichester Clark. I have a book of stories about the sea illustrated by Emma Chichester Clark, so my mind went to mermaids. Kate was wearing a hoodie, so I didn't see her hair, but I saw her long, pale face, her dreamy green eyes, her fey, other worldy aura.

'She was born at 29 weeks,' said her mother, who is in her mid forties and only has this one, very precious child. I imagined Kate curled up in utero, so tiny, and then lying in the incubator battling to live. And a story came into my mind about a woman desperate for a baby who finds a new born mermaid under a cabbage in her vegatable patch and raises it as her child.

I began to tell the story to Kate. The fact that she was born in the tsunami year made it all the better. Who knows how many mermaids were washed ashore by the tsunami?

And so another story has begun, a chapter emailed off each evening at bedtime for my friend to read to Kate, complete with pictures drawn with my computer mouse and Paint. Not with the thought of publication, but of finding the story inside me and drawing it out and presenting it to this child, like shells found on the beach. I make much better stories when I do them this way.