Writing For Young Audiences

Where do you go ?

Where will you be?

That other wonder place

You go to without me.

 On a rainy day last summer I made a tent with a woollen throw, cast over the back of two chairs.  My grandchildren aged four and two couldn’t wait to climb inside.  Even though both ends of this makeshift tent were open and I was still in the room and visible to them, it was as if I didn’t exist.  They had entered their own imaginative space and chattered away, energetically imagining all sorts of adventurous scenarios.

It is one of the undoubted joys of story telling either orally with your audience there in the room or in writing, to be able to transport those children listening/reading into what I call That Wonder Place.

Is it underneath the waves?

Or deep inside the sky?

Do you travel on the wind

Can I hear it if I try?

The place that the child’s imagination brings him when he encounters a new idea or tries to envisage something of the adult world which he cannot yet make sense of.  And when he  gets there, what does he see or feel or hear? What kind of sensual memories linger there?  What kind of creative magic works to invent this place or time or space?

Over the years I’ve tried to find different ways into That Wonder Place; through drama and improvisation, through story telling and poetry and always, always asking how can we better share in the wonders of the child’s imaginative experience?

Is it red or green or blue?

Does it wobble when you stand?

Is it sticky like a cake mix?

Can I reach it with my hand?

How do children view that adult world from which they are precluded?  What are the words, the forms, the textual imagery that work to free the child from the physical fabric of his own world and transport him imaginatively into those other Wonder Places.

With my grandchildren another door into that world has opened and I am treasuring the imaginative adventures we share together.

Well I’ll just come there, and see you

In that other wonder place

I’ll close my eyes and be there

Like a breath across your face.

Available on this page you will see links to extracts of some of the work I have created for and by children. They include plays suitable for a classroom full of 7-11 year olds and two stories for children at the lower end of primary school.