Like so many children's authors, I began by writing for my own children. I found it impossible to write interesting stories using simple words. As any parent, I expected my children to rise to the challenge. When I read my stories to them, big words and all, they naturally ask, “What does that word mean?” I answered, reread that sentence, and moved on. Typically, that word entered into their usage and they then owned that new word. I discovered later that if I didn’t use too many “difficult” words in a row, children could usually figure out the meaning simply from context.
Challenging readers with interesting and fun stories that include some new words is a far superior approach than modifying our writing to meet them at their level. We need only to go back a generation to find when this philosophy was wide-spread in children’s literature. Somewhere, we as educators and authors, lost sight of the goal. We have made books so “accessible” to poor readers that we have started on the slippery slop of writing down to them.
