Skip to main content

Why is good children's literature so powerful, so magical?

 
Tim Myers is a writer, songwriter, storyteller, and university lecturer in English.

His Glad to Be Dad:  A Call to Fatherhood (Familius) is in both e-book and print form; it was featured on Parents Magazine’s website, Disney’s BabyZone, and won the Ben Franklin Digital Award.  His full-length Dear Beast Loveliness:  Poems of the Body (BlazeVox) earned an excellent review from poet Grace Cavalieri.  He's placed numerous pieces in top children's magazines (Cricket, AppleSeeds, Storyworks, New Moon), and has 11 children's books out (and three in press), which have won a number of awards and honors.  These include excellent reviews from Kirkus, SLJ, Booklist, and The New York Times, a short stint on The New York Times bestseller list for children's books, and adaptations of his works for drama and dance; in addition, Basho and the Fox was read aloud on NPR and Basho and the River Stones was one of three nominees for a California Young Readers medal.  Tim won the 2012 SCBWI Magazine Merit Award for Fiction.  He's also published a great deal of other fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.  He's placed over 120 poems (Rattle, Northeast, South Carolina Review, Southern Humanities Review, national anthologies), once won a national poetry contest judged by John Updike, and has a chapbook out from Pecan Grove Press, That Mass at Which the Tongue Is Celebrant.  He’s been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes.  As a fantasy/science fiction writer, he won a prize in the Writers of the Future Contest, and his work has appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Worlds of Fantasy and Horror, Space & Time, Weird Tales, Abyss & Apex, Futures Mysterious, on the Astropoetica website, and elsewhere. 
     
Tim spent 14 years as a classroom teacher in the States and overseas (Norway, London, Tokyo), has 20 years of university experience, and has been a professional storyteller for over 25 years.
     
His wife, Dr. M. Priscilla Myers, a reading specialist, teaches at Silicon Valley's Santa Clara University (where Tim also teaches), his older son is a professor at CU in Boulder, his younger has a Masters in Literature and is currently fighting forest fires, and his daughter is a book-gluttonous comparative lit. graduate from the University of California at Berkeley.
     
None of this, however, is nearly as noteworthy to most people as finding out that Tim is the oldest of eleven children.


Tim in this YouTube interview shares how can the complexities and force of great language and art be presented to young readers.  How do we best use the master-power of Story itself to enrich not only the lives of children but our whole culture as well.
 
 "The Better Part"--it's on YouTube here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Iz27TcQK6A

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for visiting my blog and for leaving a comment.

Popular posts from this blog

VBT-Guest Author Spotlight Donna McDine

      Donna McDine is an award-winning children's author, Honorable Mention in the 77th and two Honorable Mentions in the 78 th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competitions. Her stories have been published in many print and online publications and her interest in American History resulted in writing and publishing The Golden Pathway. Donna has two more books under contract with Guardian Angel Publishing, The Hockey Agony and Powder Monkey . She writes, moms and is the Editor-in-Chief for Guardian Angel Kids and Publicist for the National Writing for Children Center from her home in the historical hamlet Tappan, NY. McDine is a member of the SCBWI and Musing Our Children.                What excites you most about your book’s topic? Why did you choose it?       The Underground Railroad was a pivotal time in American history, one that should never be repeated. It is my hope ...
36 comments
Read more

Five Tips for a More Marketable Children’s Picture Book Manuscript by Mayra Calvani

The world of children’s picture book publishing is extremely competitive. If you’re an aspiring children’s author, you need to make sure your manuscript is in excellent shape and has all the elements editors and agents look for before you begin the submission process. Here are five tips to make your picture book manuscript more marketable: Start right with the problem.  Many times beginner writers begin a picture book with back-story. It’s okay to have this back-story in the first draft, but be sure to get rid of it when you edit. Back-story is unnecessary 90% of the time and it only serves to slow down the beginning of a story, making it weaker. You want to grab the reader right from the start. So don’t be afraid to begin your story at the heart of the problem. It’s okay to set the stage with a sentence or two—but no more! Have a protagonist readers can relate to. Generally, children like to listen to stories about other children or animals with children’s characteristics. ...
25 comments
Read more

Interview Friday with author Rie McGaha

Rie McGaha was born and raised in northern California along the shores of Humboldt County where her grandmother often took her to dig for clams and watch the whales migrate. Being raised with the mountains on one side and the ocean on the other, gave Rie a deep love for nature. She has resided in the Kiamichi Mountains of SE Oklahoma for more than ten years with her husband, Nathan, where they rescue animals, nurses them back to health and tries to find homes for them. She is the mother of 12 and Nana of 33. VS: Rie, I want to thank you for being my guest here on The Writing Mama today. As you know, being a parent is hard work and when you throw writing into the mix . . . well it seems almost impossible to get everything done. I find myself asking if I giving my three children enough attention throughout the day. Now you didn’t really start writing until your children were grown, however, you have your grandchildren running around from time to time, so to start here is the first qu...
9 comments
Read more