Writing a Children's Book

Lesson 4: Shaping and Pacing.

Supplement. Anatomy of a specific SCB.

“Alien Dawn”, by Maggie Pearson, is 214 pages and broken into 14 chapters. It comes in at around 50,000 words. There are no illustrations. The striking cover picture is by Sam Hadley.

Chapter 1 opens with a few lines that seem to show a being arriving from some specified place (maybe Space) and being greeted by unspecified beings. After that, the viewpoint switches to a seaside heath where we meet the main characters; Jed “who’d recently discovered what a pessimist was, and decided he was going to be one” and who muses that it will probably rain tomorrow, and Karen, who is drawing Jed’s attention to something in the sky. The two children finally realise they’re seeing a UFO, then there’s a crash, confusion, and Karen temporarily loses her sight. The story is told from Jed’s viewpoint until halfway down Page 4, when the author uses a transition sentence to move smoothly into Karen’s viewpoint.

“He wasn’t going to make waves.” (End of Jed’s P.O.V.) “As for Karen, she’d had no time…” (Beginning of Karen’s P.O.V.)

Part way down P.5. the viewpoint switches back to Jed with another transition sentence. The old naval base is introduced, and Jed wonders why its new incarnation as a weather tracking station has to mean razor wire.

By the end of P.7., Jed has seen Karen home, and closed the gate behind her. The reader continues down the path in Karen’s P.O.V. and encounters Lazlo (whom Karen addresses as “Lasher”) working on a motor bike. Next, Karen encounters Jan, whose name (pronounced “Yann”) gets a brief explanation. (This might not be explained in a YA novel, or an adult novel.) Jan is painting. Next Karen hears the TV and assumes that “seven year old Toby” is watching it. This is the first age the reader is given, and at first sight some readers take Lazlo and Jan to be much older than they are.

We learn that Jan is painting posters for a “demo” and that Lazlo “does the demos”. Mum is dolphin-watching “with a party of her old dears” and Jan speculates that maybe the dolphins are watching her. This is an important clue to later events.

At the end of P 10, Karen is in her room, assuring herself that everything is normal. Her sight is returning, and she finds a small stone in the pocket of her coat. She remembers a scene at the UFO crash site that she doesn’t remember actually happening… bright light, and a figure walking. Jan comes in and spots the stone. He is very interested, but the chapter closes on P 12 with Karen alone again, realising that the stone has unlocked her memory. “The stone was the key”.

A lot of information has been given in this chapter. Several characters have been introduced, and the first fantasy (or sf) event has happened. The writing style is much more sophisticated than that of “The Orange Outlaw”, and some readers might be captivated with the quiet humour.

Chapter 2 introduces Jed’s father, who is on medication for what seems to be a mental disorder and who relies on Jed for shopping, cooking and everyday support. We learn that Mum has married “Nigel the Nerd” and, in the face of Nigel’s ultimatum, has chosen Nigel over Jed. Karen calls to discuss the close encounter, and Jed tries to brush it off. Jed goes off to look at the site, and encounters two men in suits who interrogate him. Jed goes home. There’s another small passage from the Unknown Being’s P.O.V.

In Chapter 3, Karen tries to talk to Jed at school, and again he avoids the subject. Karen does a painting in Art that intrigues her teacher. And so it goes on, until on P 33, Karen corners Jed and persuades him to look at, and then to take possession of, the odd stone.

From then on, the mystery increases, with every scene adding more touches to build a rounded picture. The stone affects creativity, and when Jan gets hold of it his paintings explode into brilliance. Karen becomes frightened, and Jed has more unsettling encounters with the men in suits. By the end of the story, the strands have all come together; Karen’s half brothers Lazlo and Jan have been deeply affected, and Jed’s father’s malaise is explained. The men in suits and their interest in the “weather station” have been uncovered, and the dolphins have played their part. The whole complex web has been spun, and Jed has decided that; “Pessimism was rubbish. You imagined the worst that could happen and you braced yourself to meet it head on and then life suddenly stepped sideways…”

“Alien Dawn” is an unusual book in many ways, but it does fulfil most of the givens for SCBs. Jed and Karen are not teenagers, but “older children”, and their friendship is not in the least romantic. They react in different ways to mystery and stress, and both have “different” home lives. Jed has had to take on the role of carer for his father, while Karen lives with both parents and her brother, plus the three elder children from her mother’s first marriage.

In many ways, SCBs like “Alien Dawn” can be more “adult” than some YA fiction, perhaps because characters this age are less self-absorbed than some teenagers. Some of the plot is so complex that many readers would need to read the book twice to find out exactly what is happening at all times.

Books like “Alien Dawn” should be required reading for anyone who thinks children’s books are “sweet little stories”.

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