Student story- Where the wild writers are

By Nikki Koppers

After the longest session of the longest day, the campers groggily stumbled back to the Holiday Inn. It took them in and out of minutes and what felt like hours to finally arrive at the place where the journalists slept.

But the Advanced Writing class stayed after hours. They read. But they did not read Pulitzer Prize winning stories. They read a children’s book, “Where The Wild Things Are,” by Maurice Sendak.

The class reverted back to their preschool days. They formed a circle. They sat criss-cross applesauce. A few laid on their stomachs. They giggled. They thought they were above this. They had graduated to chapter books a long time ago.

But their adviser, Barbara Hollingsworth, put her own twist on the picture book. In between each page she mentioned the many writing devices Sendak had worked into his children’s book.

“A forest grew and grew and grew, until the ceiling hung with vines and the walls became the world.”

She paused.

“That’s my favorite line in the whole book. It really puts you in the story.”

The class listened more attentively after that. Every comment she made they could apply to their work. And all of this was in a children’s book.

She read on.

“They roared their terrible roars!”

“They gnashed their terrible teeth!”

"They rolled their terrible eyes!”

She looked up and faced her class.

“Do you guys see how he used repetition there?”

Heads nodded.

Some students laughed at how obvious these tricks had been used.

Hailey Lapin walked away with a new outlook on children’s literature.

“I totally agreed with Barbie,” she said. “Children’s authors have a gift. With only eight or nine words on a page they can tell a story. This book has taught me that being concise is better than being superfluous.”

When you read a book like this as a child, the seven words on the page transport you to another world. Why should it be any different today?

Nikki Koppers is a junior at Notre Dame de Sion and a student in the advanced writing class at the Flint Hills Publication Workshop.