To Write for Middle-Grade Readers is to Write About Elsewhere

We’re not writing for us as we are now, but us as we were, or could have been, or should have been.

In Wisconsin I dreamed of the sea.

Thirty years later I still think about what prompted a ten-year-old boy to decide, emphatically, without hesitation, that things existed in the ocean that no one knew except for him. Whole biomes, untouched and ready for someone (ideally me) to discover them. I’d be an explorer. A pioneer. Respectfully, of course. A cryptid conservationist recognized across the seven seas. A veritable Black Cousteau, if you will. They’d write books about my exploits and adapt them into movies. Those were the stories I loved. Those were the stories that showed me Elsewhere.

The idea of exploration in children’s literature isn’t new. The Hundred Acre Wood. Narnia. I’d mention destinations imagined by non-white traditionally published authors pre-2010, but that’s a different essay. The point is, for as long as children have been able to roam free of parent and guardian supervision, there has been Elsewhere.

In Elsewhere, rules aren’t as strict. Curfews aren’t enforced and homework is a thing of the past.

In Elsewhere, ninjas ride unicorns and zombies tape Air Tags to their tangled hair so they don’t lose their heads.

In Elsewhere, bullies beg for forgiveness and friends are forever. They don’t move away, or transfer schools, or suddenly start hanging around the boy/girl/person that you were secretly crushing on.

In Elsewhere, you are understood.

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Middle grade (hereinafter referred to as MG) is a nebulous category. Then again, what category isn’t? Life can’t be constrained in neat and orderly compartments because life isn’t neat and orderly. But I digress. Publishing standards typically section off the ages between eight and twelve as MG, with all genres and styles encompassed, as that is the target audience the stories are aimed at. The main characters of these stories fall within that age range as well, which begs the question of how aspiring writers—or writers switching to the category—can effectively capture the voice, dreams, and conflicts facing a person a decade-plus removed from their own experiences.

This is a valid question, one that—after the debacles of men writing non-male characters, non-Black authors writing Black characters, etc.—should be treated with the decorum it deserves. Nothing can be taken for granted.

Between the ages of eight and twelve, everything we’ve known and considered immutable is changing. The understanding of the world we inhabit grows from house to neighborhood to city and state and country. Our own bodies take matters into their own hands and we enter the amorphous realm of puberty, beginning a process of transformation that is humbling and humiliating. It is chaotic, mortifying. Brains are expanding and absorbing more information than ever thought possible. Ears have always heard everything and eyes have always seen what they weren’t supposed to, but now meaning is attached. Headlines are shared. Comments are repeated. Criticism is internalized. Oftentimes, writing for a middle-grade audience means interrogating the obstacles, both internally and externally constructed, that this new awareness brings.

Between the ages of eight and twelve, everything we’ve known and considered immutable is changing.

Bringing back any memories? Good. Technology changes and the climate changes, but the soul-crushing ache of transferring schools, the fear of being made fun of, and the hope when your crush looks at you and smiles—that doesn’t change. What experiences are pivotal to your character’s development?

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In Washington, DC, I dreamed of adventure.

I was ten when I first flew to see my grandmother. My parents and my siblings stayed behind while I got to seek new lands, find new quests, and maybe eat junk food without the fear of stern judgment. Elsewhere was a row house deep in Anacostia, or a hot church on a Sunday morning while my grandmother sang hymns, or a water park my aunt and uncle took me to after an intense game of Duck Hunt. Elsewhere was a terrifying night of sleeping in a room by myself after spending all my previous years sharing a room with three other siblings. Elsewhere was my grandmother comforting me while explaining what “homesick” was while her stories played on the tiny television in the background. Elsewhere was an adventure, but I learned that for me, an adventure was better when experienced with others.

Exploration can reveal the interior. MG fiction is as much about the realizations we make inside our minds, between action and consequence, as it is about the progress we make outside. Maybe the real journey is the one we went on inside our heads; the tricky part is getting into the heads of our characters. Allow them to make choices we wouldn’t! We’re not writing for us as we are now, but us as we were, or could have been, or should have been. Write for the kid who doesn’t know the answers but does know anything is possible, and who explores until they either find the answer or stumble onto another adventure that is even more thrilling than the last. Find the journey pertinent to that particular character.

Adventure and exploration aren’t just limited to the grandiose either. Elsewhere can be found in the attic. At recess. Under the bed. The kid who tames the dragon and the kid who finally beats an older sibling in basketball both march into the kitchen triumphant and guzzle iced tea from a mug their mother told them not to use. It isn’t the scale of the journey to Elsewhere that matters, but its impact. What impact does your character’s journey have on them?

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In Accra I dreamed of family.

I traveled to Ghana during my tenth summer. Well, maybe traveled is an emotionless verb. More like I was dragged kicking and screaming, protesting the injustice of a trip to the unfamiliar when the familiar had only recently become so. It was between my fourth- and fifth-grade years, and we left Wisconsin to O’Hare to Heathrow to Kotoka near the end of June. We were to spend a whole month with friends of the family for the next month. I can’t remember if I was horrified or excited (horricited?), but I do remember thinking that losing out on a summer of hijinks and shenanigans in my neighborhood was the worst thing imaginable. True censorship of fun.

And yet, Elsewhere emerged between the towering anthills I explored with my older brother and the youngest son of our host family, a boy who would become another brother, a new cousin, a best friend, and an undying companion. The three of us tracked geckos and fled from spiders. We watched movies and held dance-offs. We devoured chocolate and escaped the heat in the house of another boy who owned a Sega Genesis and Mortal Kombat II (Jax >>>> Johnny Cage, debate your ancestors). As a kid who grew up removed from extended family, I found the camaraderie and joy I’d feared I’d left behind in Wisconsin and carried home the knowledge that family can be what we declare it is, and that a neighborhood could stretch from the red clay of Accra to the gray cement of Milwaukee.

Find the journey pertinent to that particular character.

We enter the middle-grade era of our lives in an additive mode: Every encounter in life contributes to our worldview, or the way we process events through our lived experience. Logically it must, as we are consumers of stimuli from birth. But in our middle-grade years, we are that amorphous mass of putty within a cocoon, and those encounters with other people—the time we share, the things we learn, the hurts we feel, the joys we embrace—bring with them awareness and a near-daily revelation. How, as you’re writing your middle-grade story, does your character transform throughout the course of their journey to Elsewhere? How do they return? Do they even return?

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I didn’t become a marine biologist. The ocean—as I tell students when I visit—is scary. But maybe somewhere else another child dreams of that too. Or they also dream of adventure, or friendship and family, or maybe they dream of a land called S’mores ruled by talking marshmallows. The point is that they dream. Write for that child. Maybe they’re your child; maybe they’re your inner child. But when we write middle grade, we should keep those readers in mind.

I write about Elsewhere, a fantastical place that transforms from space to a magical land with larger-than-life folktales to a realm between worlds. A place where the journey is just as much the point as is the destination. A place where everyone can access, is welcome, and is invited back. A place where bonds are formed and self is identified. Where even if you never make it, just the possibility of its existence creates wonder and sparks curiosity.

What will you write about?