Thursday, June 24, 2010


Robert Munsch ~ "Kids Get Up and Leave"

"Kids either keep laughing, or, if they don't like the story, they get up and leave. That's the honest feedback I depend on."

Children's author, Robert Munsch, made up 519 stories over two years and read them to kids in the day-care center where he worked at the time. Out of those 519 stories, he had ten "good stories."
"For a story to be worthy of becoming a book, it must pass a series of tests," Munsch explains. He tells it in the city, in the country, in the north of Canada, the south and then into the Arctic. "Sometimes a story isn't publishable simply because it's too tightly woven into one particular community" he says. *

Every Wednesday is Story Hour in The Neat Little Bookshop. We can vouch for Munsch's theory. Kids love books. They love a good story read with enthusiasm ~ and they get up and leave if they don't like the story.

For first-time authors this is helpful advice: Read aloud to a live audience. (Find Thumper the Rabbit in the red towel; Gizmo the Pekingese on the stool.) You may have to click on photo for larger image.

*Meet the Authors and Illustrators, Deborah Kovacs and James Preller, Scholastic 1991.

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