Last
week I shared an article on writing mysteries, first published in Writer’s Guide to 2012. Here’s another
section of the article, focused on writing mysteries for children and teenagers.
Starting Young
Children may become mystery fans at an early age. Juliana
Hanford, Senior Editor at Kane Press, says, “I vividly remember the very first
time I was reading a mystery on my own and had that ‘can’t put it down!’
feeling. I think that feeling can make kids not just mystery lovers but book
lovers for life!”
“I guess children
enjoy reading mysteries for the same reason adults do,” says Mara Rockliff, who
writes a humorous chapter book mystery series under the pen name Lewis B.
Montgomery. “They’re fun, they’re exciting, they’re full of surprises and
suspense. And a mystery series offers the chance to keep coming back to characters
we love.”
As a bonus, mysteries stretch the way kids think. Of her Milo & Jazz Mysteries, Rockliff
says, “Kids read these books for fun, but teachers like them because the
detective lessons teach critical thinking skills. For instance, setting a trap
for a culprit equals predicting and testing; circumstantial evidence equals
making inferences. And the back of every book includes puzzles and games to
help the reader hone those skills.”
Mysteries for kids aren’t quite the same as mysteries for
adults, of course. “Practically all adult mysteries are murder mysteries, but
in a realistic chapter book, you can’t have kids knocking each other off,”
Rockliff says. “One of the big challenges is thinking of new crimes that are
serious enough to be investigated but not too serious. If it’s theft, it needs
to be a funny and unusual theft, as in The
Case of the Stinky Socks or The Case
of the Missing Moose. Or it might be something off the wall: figuring out
how the public pool turned purple overnight, or trying to prove a pet psychic
is a fake.”
By the time readers reach the teen years, fewer crimes are
off-limits. Sara Beitia wrote The Last
Good Place of Lily Odilon, which she calls “A noir-ish contemporary Young
Adult.” She says, “In reality, kids can and do encounter the heavy stuff – love
and death and people with bad intentions – and like anyone, they mull these
things over and try to digest the implications. And they expect to encounter
the heavy stuff in literature, too. Perhaps it helps with the digesting. In
dealing with these darker matters, it’s rather amazing what can be covered in
kid lit [and] kids often shock adults with a frank interest in the lurid.
Still, everyone has an opinion as to how much kids can and should be exposed to
in books.”
Most children’s book publishers are open to mysteries, but
don’t specialize. Brian Farrey, Flux Acquisitions editor, says, “I’ve heard
from countless librarians at the American Library Association conferences that
their teens are looking for more mysteries, to the point where librarians
direct them to adult books to satisfy the need. [Therefore] my ears perk up a
bit if I’m presented with one in submissions. But I don’t acquire based on fads
or trends.”
Chris Eboch’s novels for ages nine and up include The Eyes of Pharaoh, a mystery in
ancient Egypt; The Well of Sacrifice,
a Mayan adventure; The Genie’s Gift,
a middle eastern fantasy; and the Haunted series, about kids who travel with a
ghost hunter TV show, which starts with The
Ghost on the Stairs. Her writing craft books include You Can Write for Children: How to Write Great Stories, Articles, and
Books for Kids and Teenagers, and Advanced
Plotting. Learn more at www.chriseboch.com
or her Amazon page,
No comments:
Post a Comment