Turn Not Pale, Beloved SnailBy Jacqueline JacksonAbout This BookNot all books need an introductory note. None of mine up till now have had one, and I always skipped them myself, until I once read one of Walter de la Mare's by mistake, thinking it was the first chapter. But the more I worked on this book, the more I felt I needed to tell the reader something about it and about myself from the very start. So here is an Introduction, which is also sometimes called Author's Note, To the Reader, or, in old books, Dear Reader or Gentle Reader. This is a book about a lot of things, all clustered around the idea of writing. I'm writing it because it's the sort of book I wish someone had written for me. From third grade to seventh I filled dozens of notebooks and a fat briefcase with an assortment of stories and poems, but I never saw a book for kids about writing except textbooks. Since then I've seen a few, and a lot more textbooks, for both children and adults, and I haven't found one yet that isn't deadly. I suspect most of them will kill the writer in you, or at least clobber it pretty badly, just as they did to me for a while. In my opinion these books start from the wrong direction, from rules and drudgery rather than from the joy and compulsion of writing. I'm thinking of you as eight or twelve or fifteen years old, and as a person who is interested in writing, or who might become interested. I'm also thinking of you as twenty and fifty and eighty, for the things I'll be talking to you about I believe are for people of any age, and it's never too late. I'd just prefer to have said them to you, if you're an adult, when you were sixteen. Or better yet, eleven. My name is Jacqueline Jackson, and I've published, counting this one, ten books, eleven if you include the one printed in a newspaper when I was ten. Perhaps you've read some of them; you'll find a list if you poke around in the pages before the numbering begins, the part of the book called "the front matter." (A book can refer you all over the place this way, like a treasure hunt. Sometimes the treasure isn't worth it but you never know till you get there.) In this book, in all my books, a lot of my stories are rural and watery, for I grew up on a dairy and hybrid-seed-corn farm in southern Wisconsin, and spent a stretch of summers on a small nearby lake. In the same way, your stories and speech will reflect where you are, or have been, for our deepest impressions settle in our bones when we're little. My father went to a country school and taught in it for a year when he was seventeen— he let the kids skate so long on the creek at recess that they all had to stay till suppertime to get their work done— but when I was small the school building had been moved to be a corncrib on the dairy, and we and the neighbor kids went to town in a school bus. Actually, our country district didn't have enough students to fill a bus, so they paid a local taxi firm to squash us all into an old square cab with jump seats. George, his fat cigar stinking, drove us morning and night. This elegant ride made the town kids think we were all millionaires, even though it was the Depression and everybody was as poor as everybody else. I went to high school and college in the same town, and after graduation married a classmate, Bob Jackson. Right now we both teach in a new university in Illinois. We have four daughters who we had fun naming: Damaris Lee, called Demi; Megan Trever, Gillian Patricia, prounouced Jillian as in gin, ginger, and Gibraltar, and Jacqueline Elspeth, who is called Elspeth or Beebo, to avoid confusion with me. They all get older every year, so when I refer to them I'll have to give their ages. Right now the older three are getting pretty grown up— Demi's seventeen, Megan's fifteen, Jill's thirteen. Elspeth is often older and wiser than anyof us; she's six. Oh, and Frodo is part collie, part German Shepard, and Thorgaut is Megan's big black cat with six white hairs on his chest. I won't go into our confusion of guinea pigs, the Weetles. What do you do with this book? There aren't any rules. Start anywhere and go anywhere. If you're not interested in writing ("Happiness is showing your calf at the fair, but misery is having to write about it"), maybe you'll find the stories and anecdotes worth reading anyway. If a teacher likes this book, don't let her (or him) shove it down your throat and make lessons out of it, unless that's the way you want to use it. And tell your teacher, if you have to, that the kind of writing this book is about isn't a spelling assignment, or a lesson in grammar or handwriting or how to make paragraphs. This writing is to get down your good ideas, and what you think and feel inside. Later on, if you like what you've written and want to hand it in to the school newspaper, or post it on the board, or send it in to a magazine, or just keep it for yourself, then is the time to neaten it up and check the spelling and paragraphs. One problem with school is that if you know you're going to have to rewrite something you often say, "I'll make it perfect the first time, or plenty short—" and that kills it a-borning. The really important thing is first to get it all down without judging whether it's good or bad, and only then to go back, maybe, and rewrite it here and there to make it say what you want even better. If that's as far as you go, that's plenty far. I suggest you keep your stuff in a notebook or a briefcase and call it My Writing or Keep Out, because you never know when the urge will come to do something fresh with an old idea. Besides, it's fun to look back when you're older, and see what you wrote at an earlier age. Also, when you're grown up, someday one of your kids will be sick and will spend a day rummaging through your briefcase, and will be amazed to realize that you really were a tweve-year-old. What I'll do in these chapters is give you some suggestons for writing, and these may spark ideas of your own. I'll tell about reading we've liked. Every book I mention I'll put in a list, a bibliograpy, at the end of the book. Throughout I'll include scraps of my own writing, my children's writing, other kids' writing, and other adult writing. I'll also include a lot of other stuff because that's the way I like to write. Things keep reminding me of things. And as I've said, what you'll do is write whatever you like, however you like— if you like. An introduction can also include these final bits: there's a place for the outhor to claim responsibility for all that's faulty in a book, and ask your forgiveness— so consider your pardon begged. And there's a spot to thank all those who helped, for most books aren't written by the cheese standing alone. So I will end with my list: My daughters, Damaris, Megan, Gillian, and Elspeth, all writers and critics themselves; my parents, Vera and Ron Dougan, who encouraged me from the crib; Joanne Shaheen of the Rockford Teacher Development Center, who first asked me to work with children on writing in the classroom, Claire Kentzler, friend, excellent editor, and director of the University of Wisconsin WHA School of the Air, over whose raido waves many of these chapters began as part of the program "The Author is You"; Ed and Carol, Chad, Heather, and Sara Dell, who provided fodder for the chapters and also critical readings, ditto Chad, Eva, and Alison Walsh; Eila and Bill Perlmutter, Francis, Greg, and Josie; Mary and Jake, Phoebe and Coby Leed; and Beverly and Jerry Enright. I thank the many children who have shown interest in the sorts of things I've written about here: some of them personal friends, some Wisconsin schoolchildren who have sent their writings to WHA radio station, and some children from schools and book fairs where I have taught or visited. I also thank my students at Sangamon State University, Springfield, Illinois, as well as my colleagues Richard Damashek and Jerry Storm, and my cousin-colleagues Gary Kilarr and Jane DeLawter from Governors State University, for demonstrating that this is a useful book for adults as well as for children. And thanks beyond thanks go to Carole and Joe McHugh, Maurie and Ugo Formigoni, and Kibber and John Miller. So end of Introduction, and on with Woodies!
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