Writing for really young readers

[42]

So my job has me writing stories for 4-6 year old readers.

I'm finding the process to be a little frustrating and I wonder if anyone here has advice.

The stories have to be short, really short. About a page and about 25 words or so.

The stories have to incorporate rhyme. We are given a target sound to use in the story, such as /-ug/ or /-en/. We usually pick two or three words that fit. We can also use onomatopoeia and names.

All the stories must tie into an playful activity that the children can actually do. If the activity incorporates math, music, dance, art, or drama.

No big words. We incorporate some vocabularly building, but many of the kids we work with are still learning English and we don't want to add to their confusion.

My frustration comes with one team member wanting them to be stories with an introduction, rising action, climax, and denouement. Another team-member prefers the stories to have "rhythm" being more akin to song lyrics. Sometimes we get both, rarely and only after a lot of work.

I have no sense of rhythm, so making song lyrics is frustrating. I get the story plotting part, but that seems to get thrown aside for more lyrical verse. So a lot of the lyric stories make no sense and are just dumb. I'm not sure how much they care about the grammatical or story comprehension development of the children.

Opinions? Suggestions?

[Skar]

Smack them both and tell them to stop grandstanding.

[Chimera]

So my job has me writing stories for 4-6 year old readers.

I'm finding the process to be a little frustrating and I wonder if anyone here has advice.

The stories have to be short, really short. About a page and about 25 words or so.

Do you mean 25 words total? Or a page plus 25 words? Because there's a big difference. If you can give me an exact wordcount, I'll know better what advice to give.

Some magazines  you can check out to see what they do are Spider, Ladybug, and Baby Bug. There should be some examples online, and I know the BYU library carries at least a few of those, in the Juvenile Section of the library. The publisher is Carus Publishing, the same ones who put out Cricket for middle grade readers (one of the top children's magazines).

I haven't had as much experience writing for this age, but some. I wrote a story for the Friend (they have a section called "For Little Friends" which is aimed at 4-6 year old readers) and a story for that age in a creative writing class. Both were short, but not 25 words. And, they didn't have to be rhymed. Personally, I hate rhyme. I feel for you there.

[dreamking47]

Aside from the balancing of your co-workers interests, that actually sounds like a really fun job.  So my first bit of advice would be, try to have fun with it (or if not, subcontract it -- how much are they paying you?  )

My other suggestion would be to turn off your adult brain with regards to the absurd when it comes to the rhyming.  Kids that age are much less self-conscious about the absurd, and indeed often find it delightful and memorable: consider the enduring popularity of nursery rhymes and stories like Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham.  That doesn't mean forget about meaning, just realize that the symbols of young children are often very primal and may seem absurd and senseless to adult eyes.  And even if all (all?!) you do is help foster an appreciation for the sensuality of words and the joy of reading, you will have still done a very great thing indeed.

MattD

[42]

Thanks for the advice so far.

My pay for this job is almost non-existent.

I should clarify some things. The people I work for are BYU Professors in child language development (mostly speech pathology).

The stories are about 25 words in length. We have less than 5 minutes to read them and/or act them out, then ten minutes to do the accompanying activity.

Also, to be blunt, we are specifically working with the not-so-smart kids (developmentally delayed, learning disabled, culturally disadvantaged, etc...). For example, some of these kids don't recognize or pronounce certain sounds, like a hard /g/ or the /-ink/ sound. Hence, the rhyming and lots of repetition to emphasize the sounds the children might be struggling with. Some also struggle with logic tasks (sorting and organizing), having trouble with math, writing, or other subjects, hence the importance of story comprehension.

Repetition of other sounds in the story are called distractors which may or may not be used depending on frequency.

Maybe it's just all the restrictions that make this so frustrating.

[dreamking47]

Well, here's one idea.  With /ug/ you can rhyme (among other things) bug and dug, and dirt and insects are the sort of primal things that resonate with many young children (stereotypically boys -- if this were a story for a general audience I'd suggest you make the protagonist a girl just to shake up gender expectations).  You could have a story about a boy named Doug who dug (showing how the same sounds can be produced by different groups of letters) and found a bug that he put in a jug.  Or something like that.  Then go outside with the kids for five minutes, have them each dig up a bug, put it in a jug you have, and then you all go back inside for a mug of hot chocolate.  Maybe show them an ant farm at that point, too, as a way of giving context and meaning to the whole exercise.

It's not Shakespeare but hopefully it gives you some ideas...

MattD

[stacer]

Yeah, sounds like you've got a lot of restrictions. For good reasons, but still. It took Dr. Seuss a year or more, can't remember exactly, to come up with a good story with the Cat in the Hat, and I'd think that the fewer words you're allowed, the harder it will be.

I don't have any good suggestions, sorry. 25 words is a very hard length to work with.

[Chimera]

Again, I'll recommend checking out Ladybug and Baby Bug. They're magazines for really young readers. And, since they are so competetive and extremely picky about what they publish, I found it interesting to read what they had. I remember them being very short.

That's all I can think of. It does sound like there are a lot of restrictions, but it is a worthwhile thing. Approaching it from a language development perspective is interesting. But, again, it could make it difficult.

When I worked at a Tutor Time last year, I worked with beginning readers. They often read short stories that emphasized a sound, like you've described. The stories rarely had a rising action, climax, denouement--all that. There just wasn't time. Instead, they seemed to focus on a scene with some action in it. There was dialogue and a bit of humor. But it wasn't an entire story, just a moment in time. Maybe that would be easier. Also, it didn't have to rhyme all the time. It just stressed the sound with repetition, like cat, hat, fat, bat, etc.

[MsFish]

I remember a woman coming to speak to one of my creative writing classes who was published in Baby Bug.  She published a rhyme that went like this:

One Bananna, Two Bananna
In a bunch
Three Bananna, Four Bananna
Let's have lunch.


At first it's like, you got paid for that?  But I think Stacy and Chimera are right; the smaller the word count, the harder to write a good story, especially if you have to have all the steps to the story arc, which this rhyme clearly doesn't.

[Chimera]

Yeah, when I read Baby Bug, I had that same reaction. I wondered, "How do they pick what they like? They're so short!" But I figure they must have some sort of measuring system to decide what's "good" for that age.

Maybe not. Maybe it's just the personal taste of the editors. But, yes, it is hard to write such short things. I'm not good at it--which is why I'm not a poet. Even though the Friend did take a couple of the poems I wrote (which are not my greatest writings, for sure).

[precious-jules]

I have no advice . . . merely commiseration and well wishes.

[42]

I was happy to hear today that we aren't focusing on writing more of the really short stories for the moment. Instead someone wrote a story that's about a 100 words that I will be illustrating. It's also an alliteration story and not a rhyming story which makes things a little easier.

[42]

Well, my project has returned to writing stories. I'm happy to discover that my writing abilities seemed to have improved. The first story I wrote was accepted immediately and has undergone minimal editing. This makes me happy because it is really easy to spend hours editing a revising these little things. But for you enjoyment, I present my masterpiece... or something like that.

A Fat Cat

My cat is fat.
My cat sat on my hat.
My hat is flat.
My cat sat on a bat.
The bat is flat.
My cat sat on a rat.
The rat is flat.
My cat is too fff...at!


Obviously this is for the rime-ending "at". The story actually has a one problem in that it uses the word "flat" which starts with a blend. The last word is segmentent intentionally for segmenting and blending practice, but may be removed. The accompaning activity involves play-acting with a toy cat that goes around flattening origami versions of the hat, bat, and rat.

For those of you who want to give a try, we need more stories for the rime-endings "at" and "ap". Words should be simple (only 1 syllable), avoid words with low-frequency sounds, avoid constonant blends, the sentences must rhyme, and non-target words should only be Dolch pre-primer and primer words.