Printer-friendly version 08/20/2007 11:56 AM © 2007 The Blade. Privacy and Security Statement. By using this service, you accept the terms of our visitor agreement: Please read it. To print this article, choose Print from the File menu. a d v e r t i s e m e n t Back to: http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070819/ART16/70818023/-1/ART Article published August 19, 2007 Author’s writing centers stretch kids’ creativity By CHRISTOPHER BORRELLI BLADE STAFF WRITER ANN ARBOR — “Don’t be nervous, honey. Please. Don’t be.” Hannah Smotrich, middle-aged, dark tendrils of frizzy hair falling alongside her smart, expensive eyeglass frames, presses gently on the small of her daughter’s back, and urges her forward: “Sweetie, dear. Watch. This will be fun.” Then in a stage whisper, once her 7-year-old is safely out of earshot, Smotrich turns and confides: “We’ll see.” Smotrich watches her daughter walk down a hallway painted with a bright cartoony mural of gears and arrows. The girl inches forward with the tentative steps of a child entering a new school. Instructor Roger Kerson discusses the critical elements of creative writing during a workshop Which, in a sense, this is. that utilized animals to help kids work on description. ( THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT ) 826 Michigan is a free creative writing program for children that feels as Zoom | Photo Reprints though it were taught by your wry, sarcastic, hip, older sister who listens to the Shins, reads Chuck Palahniuk, keeps up with National Public Radio, eats organic, lives for Wes Anderson movies, and covets her Buffy the Vampire Slayer box sets. That’s the short-hand description, but it’s a short-hand culture, and 826 is about a sensibility: informed, young, liberal, educated, casual. All workshops — filled on a first-registered basis — are free. All tutoring (no appointment necessary) is completely free. (In Ann Arbor, new classes begin in a few weeks, but there’s a one-hour parental orientation on Aug. 28.) It offers after-school tutoring, and help with college-application essays. It has put on poetry readings, and staged theatrical productions, and published four books. And because 826 has become a national initiative, with seven chapters around the country, and considering the literary stars who have thrown their weight behind it — from Roger Ebert and David Sedaris to Zadie Smith and Ira Glass — you could argue it’s the most elaborate act yet to preserve a generation of readers. http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20070819&Category=ART16&ArtNo=70818023&SectionCat=ART&Template=printart Page 1 of 5 Printer-friendly version 08/20/2007 11:56 AM 826 was started in 2002 by the writer Dave Eggers, whose best-selling 2000 memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, enabled him to create a mini-scene around himself, with a literary magazine (The Believer), a publishing house (McSweeney’s), and this, a nonprofit chain of writing centers. 826 Michigan is the sixth chapter of what’s become 826 National. 826 Valencia, the first, is in the Mission district of San Francisco (at 826 Valencia St.). Then there’s 826 NYC in Brooklyn; 826 in Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles. Ann Arbor’s 826 is the most recent addition, founded two years ago this summer. The next 826, on the edge of Boston, is expected to open next month. STUDENT WRITING SAMPLES The point is to develop writing skills in children who can spot condescension a mile “It started to get dark. We tried to away — in children who are so familiar with the rhythms and formality of the fall asleep but we couldn’t stop classroom they’re turned off their ability to think creatively, children whose default drifting. Finally Mother told us that we would have to fall asleep while response, like the culture they’ve grown up around, is ironic and knowing. we were moving. I tried and it worked.” So a typical 826 workshop might be called “Creative Whining,” or “Burning Cliches —From “A Fish Life,” by Till Kallem, for Fuel,” or “Describing the Ocean to a Blind Person.” At a workshop last spring, 10. for instance, the subject sounded relatively mild — bookmaking — but the method “After eighteen years, I’ve realized was charming. Smotrich’s daughter entered a wide room with a low ceiling and flat one thing. Snowflakes always taste like Earth.” lighting. A dozen children filtered behind the Ann Arbor girl, and not knowing one another, they sat quietly and looked around apprehensively. —From “I Once Tasted a Snow Globe,” by Lee Eshelman, 17. Jason DePasquale, 32, an Ypsilanti illustrator, stepped forward. He’s the instructor, “As I amwalking up the steps/ Of he explained. He’s average height, with glasses, and the hesitant air of a graduate something that seems so high/ It student. The kids warmed to him right away. “Two things,” he announced. “One, feels as if I can touch the sky/ There I am/ At the ten-meter can you guys help me write a story? And two, if it goes bad, do any of you have a platform/ I feel like a cat in a rat couch at home I can sleep on?” storm.” —From “Ten Meter,” by Zachary He explained that Mr. Blotch lives in a nearby room. Mr. Blotch is their editor. They Gillis-Schwartz, 7 will come up with a plot and write a story and submit the pages and Mr. Blotch will “Let me introduce myself. I am either like it and publish it or Mr. Blotch will hate it “and I’ll be out of job.” Mr. Squawky, the smartest chicken in the coops all across the USA. I am Blotch is another 826 volunteer; the man who plays him never shows himself to the also quite cute. I am slightly children and speaks in a comical disembodied growl over a hidden amplifier. If Mr. chubby... I am not famous for my looks. ” Blotch likes the story (and he always does, eventually) it’ll be photocopied, stapled together, and affixed with personally designed jacket art. But if he doesn’t... —From “The Flight of the Chickens,” by Henry Ellis, 9 DePasquale slipped a sample page of prose through Blotch’s window. Seconds later, a flood of long thin shredded papers flew out. The kids giggled. So think a tutoring center. By way of Lemony Snicket. Literally: Daniel Handler, who writes the playfully sardonic series under the name Lemony Snicket, is listed as a major donor. But then, in each city with a chapter, 826 has become a rallying point for its literary and entertainment community — in Boston, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., sits on the advisory board; in New York, Sarah Vowell is on the board of directors; and last winter in Los Angeles, the writer-director Judd Apatow (Knocked Up) hosted a fund-raiser for 826 that brought out Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, and Foo Fighters and Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl. “I think they’re fantastic,” said Steve Almond, the writer of the bestselling memoir Candyfreak, and a volunteer with 826’s about-to-open Boston chapter. “I mean, I’ll do whatever they ask of me. It’s in my best interest, as someone who chose writing as a career, to try and support them. I don’t want to preach to the converted, to people who already read and write and attend book readings. I want to encourage. I had Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., to do it. If 826 were around when I was young, I would have had them.” http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20070819&Category=ART16&ArtNo=70818023&SectionCat=ART&Template=printart Page 2 of 5 Printer-friendly version 08/20/2007 11:56 AM • DePasquale hands out a blue paper of Mr. Blotch’s basics, and begins asking if the kids know what setting and plot is. They do. How about character? Can they come up with a neat character? “A kitty cat!” “A hamster.” “Photosynthesis!” “Uh, all right,” he says, “more?” “Harry Potter!” “OK, but we want to be original,” he says. “Right? We tried a Lenny Potter, but we got sued.” A few giggles. They settle on the tale of a sad duck named Al-bob Joe-cob who wore earmuffs all the time because “his ears were a source of great shame.” The kids like it and a streak of confidence enters the room. DePasquale introduces the idea of conflict. “Can anyone think how we cause problems?” Silence. Then a small voice. “A rabbit went to... no, a rabbit tried... no, a unicorn comes in and he stabs the duck to death!” DePasquale has a fast reply: “826 is violence-free. Why?” “Unicorns don’t stab?” “Exactly.” A typical 826 workshop is a little Letterman, a little performance art, and a lot like the coolest English class you never sat through. 826 Michigan boasts a roster of 100 volunteers, about a few dozen of which stay regularly active. Some are teachers, some former English majors; a number are University of Michigan creative writing students. Nearly all are in their 20s and early 30s. Though 826 regularly brings its workshops and tutoring to area schools — which is often how parents first hear of 826 — the group looks for a sensibility and enthusiasm in its volunteers, not a teaching degree. “We interview everyone,” said Amanda Uhle, executive director (and one of only two 826 Michigan full-time staffers), “but we don’t keep a list of qualifications or anything.” Which may be one reason they seem so effective, said Jeff Gaynor, an English teacher at Clague Middle School in Ann Arbor.