So often we think of authors as special people with an unusual gift of words and storytelling. In truth, they were once children just like us and our children. Elizabeth Haidle’s book Before We Were Authors appears to be a picture book but in truth is written as a graphic novel, and explores the childhood and early careers of famous authors.

Ms. Haidle found Mark Twain’s childhood to be one that specialized in trouble. His parents worried because he was sickly. Then they worried that he skipped school for the swimming hole where he nearly drowned several times. It wouldn’t seem that such a child would become a writer but his experiences led him to write some of the best-loved American tales of all time.

Maya Angelou’s first experience in quoting poetry to an audience happened in front of her church. She stuttered, forgot her lines and ran from the church. A crisis when she was seven kept her from talking for five years. I think I can relate.

Dr. Suess loved to draw but his art teacher encouraged him to take a different course. He thought since his drawing was awkward and peculiar he would simply develop it.

Ronald Dahl kept a diary, a very secret diary that he hid in a cookie tin hidden inside a toiletries bag swung from a branch. I’m thinking no boy in his right mind would touch a toiletry bag and no girl would climb a tree to look inside a toiletry bag — a perfect hiding place.

What of other now famous authors? J.K. Rowling wrote her first tale at age six. She wanted to be a writer from that first tale. She had no special adventures to base her later famous stories. Just like us she had the ordinary. She had a cupboard under the stairs, a few woods near her home, and a train station nearby. These all sound ordinary but in truth they were great places to sit and listen and sniff and dream of magical things.

Beatrice Potter got her best ideas from the Scottish countryside where her family vacationed. She painted from life. She reconstructed animal skeletons to help her draw accurately. She kept a journal in secret code. She was not exactly the daughter her mother wished for who should have cared more about her social status than painting techniques.

The wonderful stories of C.S. Lewis would not likely have come to be had it not been for a birth defect. A birth defect that made it impossible to become a builder since he could only hold a pencil. However, the pencil would help him build worlds of words that influence our world today.

Ms. Haidle includes several more authors in Before We Were Authors. She demonstrates how each author is not only talented and intriguing but led common lives just like each of us and our children. The one thread they all had in common was parents or other influential adults who read to them and encouraged their education. As with any small child, drawing often came before writing. They found places of solitude and adventure where their imaginations ran freely. When our children seem to be playing more than studying, may we always bear in mind that play is the work of childhood. Our job is to introduce them to the world of words and let the play begin.

Gail Cartee is going out to play now.

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