Why I Love Visiting Schools

Writing a book is solitary work. That is the part people picture, and they are right about it: a desk, a window, a great deal of crossing out. In fact, I spent ten years writing — and rewriting — Soar. Because, as Hemingway so aptly put it, 'Writing is rewriting.' But the part I look forward to most comes long after the writing is finished, when I am sitting on the floor of a classroom with a group of students who have just spent weeks with Hendrix and Ryder — and have lots of opinions about them.

That is really why I visit schools. Not to talk at students, but to find out what they think. Migration is an enormous idea to hold in your head when you are nine years old, and every class arrives at it differently. Some students are caught by the sheer distance. Others cannot get past the fact that young ospreys make the journey alone, with no parent showing them the way. I have been asked questions about that journey that I did not have good answers to because scientists are still puzzling out how birds that have never before migrated can find their way all on their own.

I always start my class visits the same way: I ask which character they liked best, and I work my way around the room. As students name their favorites, I tell them a little about where that character came from — how I came up with the idea for the character and who, if anyone, they were based on. They always seem a little surprised when I explain that the characters speak to each other in my head.

However, my favorite moment comes when a student says their favorite character is the mom. Then I get to tell them about my daughter. She was about their age when she read an early draft of Soar. She came to find me after the first five chapters, and I braced myself for a review. She told me she could see how the dad in the book was like her dad. Then she told me that the mom in Soar was not like me at all; she was so much nicer than me.

Children love this story. They love it because it is a little bit unexpected that I would find this hilarious from my own daughter, and because it tells them something true about writing, which is that the people closest to you will not spare your feelings.

Which brings me to the six friends of hers who made the book better. After I finished probably the 12th or 13th draft of Soar and thought it was close to finished, I gathered a focus group of six children roughly the age of my readers and asked them to tell me honestly what was not working. They found something. There was a chapter that just did not work, and they said so plainly. When I tell students about the earlier draft and what I then changed, they always agree that the original version had a problem. No spoilers here: your students will need to read the book before I reveal what it is.

The best part of the story, though, is that I admitted to my focus group that I did not know how to fix it; it was a part of the story I had struggled with for years. But they knew exactly what to do and told me. And it was obvious and so simple — and I knew it was perfect the moment they said it.

Students light up at this. They have already read the book, so hearing about a version that no longer exists feels like being let in on a secret. And they understand something important by the end of it: that children their age gave a grown-up advice, and the grown-up took it and made the story better.

That is what I hope students take away from a visit. Not that I am an author, but that their thinking matters — about a book, about a bird, about a four-thousand-mile journey that somehow gets made.