Send Email to Suzanne at:
sw@suzanne-williams.com
Visit Suzanne's website at:
http://www.suzanne-williams.com
Photo of Suzanne Williams by Dave Bullock
Authors Among Us - Children's Writers Who Are or Who Have Been Librarians
|
|
Suzanne
Williams Send Email to Suzanne at: sw@suzanne-williams.com Visit Suzanne's website at: http://www.suzanne-williams.com Photo of Suzanne Williams by Dave Bullock |
|
Authors Among Us - Children's Writers Who Are or Who Have Been Librarians
|
|
Featured Titles by Washingon author Suzanne Williams
|
Mommy Doesn't Know My Name
Houghton Mifflin, illustrated by Andrew Shachat ISBN 0-395-77979-0 paperback. |
|
My Dog Never
Says Please
Dial, illustrated.] by Tedd Arnold ISBN 0-8037-1679-6 hardback ISBN 0-14-056725-9 paperback |
|
Library Lil
Dial, illustrated by Steven Kellogg ISBN 0-8037-1698-2 hardback |
| Forthcoming Books:
Old MacDonald in the City (Golden), illus. by Thor Wickstrom, Spring 2002. The Witch Casts a Spell (Dial), illus. by Barbara Olsen, Fall 2002. Find out more about Suzanne's books at: http://www.suzanne-williams.com |
|
| What influenced you to become a librarian?
While completing a bachelor's degree in sociology I started pondering what kind of career I wanted. I didn't think I'd really enjoy social work, so it seemed that some other kind of graduate study was in order. My dad, a mailman, serviced a route that included a lot of university professors, including a library professor. Knowing how much I'd always loved to read, he suggested library science. I talked to the library professor with whom my dad was acquainted, and decided to get my teaching certification, then enroll in the library program. Do you have a library/information science degree? I have a master's of library science degree from the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon (which is where I grew up.) What kinds of library positions have you held and where? Except for a brief initial stint as a District Instructional Materials Center Supervisor, all my experience has been in elementary school libraries in Kent and Auburn School Districts in Washington State. How long have you been a librarian? I've been a librarian for 24 years. The last ten years I've only worked half-time though. Are you currently working as a librarian? I'm on a leave-of-absence this year. Do you plan to continue in the profession? I plan to resign at the end of the year. I will leave to become a fulltime writer/ school visit speaker. Last year I visited over 40 schools, and was so busy in the spring with visits and working half-time as a librarian that I had no time to write! I loved being in the library too, but I'm ready for a new challenge, and a more relaxed and flexible schedule. Which came first in your life, your career as a librarian, or writing for children? My career as a librarian came first. I didn't start writing toward publication until after I'd already been a librarian for ten years. Did your library work have anything to do with becoming a children's writer? It had everthing to do with it! Most writers are readers first, and librarians are readers. Reading wonderful children's books made me want to write for children. Did your library work directly influence your work as an author? Working in an elementary school certainly has helped me to gain a knowledge of the school setting, which has helped in writing several of my books. In answering kids' requests for books, it was obvious to me that humor is always in demand -- a good thing since I enjoy writing humorous stories. In the long run though, I tend to write about subjects that I WANT to write about, rather than trying to analyze where the needs might be. Did librarianship increase your knowledge of children's literature and influence the kinds of things you chose to write? I have a wide knowledge of children's literature
because of all my years as a librarian, but that knowledge doesn't influence
the subjects I choose to write about so much as CRAFT. Reading other
children's books has taught me a lot, for Did incidents from your library work ever make it into your books? My love of reading, and librarian's desire to see others love reading too led to my tall tale, Library Lil. I set the story in a public library, rather than a school library because I wanted the non-reading characters to be grown-ups, both for the comic effect, and to be sensitive to the feelings of children for whom reading is difficult. I also like to make references in my stories
to specific books I love. In Library Lil, the motorcycle gang
fights over copies of Beverly Cleary's The Mouse and the Motorcycle.
In my early chapter book Emily at School, Emily What were the greatest benefits of being a librarian to you as a writer? You see what kids like to read. As a librarian you're familiar with the new books coming out--that's market research. Were there any drawbacks to being a librarian and also a writer? The main drawback is the same for any writer who works at another job--lack of time for writing. If you wrote while working as as librarian, how did you manage the time-juggling act? Managing the "time-juggling act" is a problem for anyone with a career in addition to writing. Before I went half-time, I stole weekend hours, and also wrote one or two evenings a week after my children were in bed. After I went half-time things became a lot easier. Since I worked at the library two full days and one half-day per week, I was able to write two full-days per week. (During the half-day I did volunteer tutoring.) Did you find any conflicts or job-related
difficulties in being both a writer and a librarian? My principal was very supportive of my writing. I think it pleased her to be able to tell parents that the school's librarian was a published children's book writer. Most of the teachers were encouraging and appreciative, too. (There were a couple who were less so, but I tried not to let it bother me. It's possible they were jealous, or maybe they just didn't like my books. After all, we all have different tastes!) Because I taught writing during the last several years I worked as librarian, I often shared my writing with children to help illustrate the writing process and writing strategies. I think students were pretty much uniformly proud to have a librarian who'd written books. Sometimes it even gave them "bragging rights" with other students, which I usually found out about indirectly. When my son was in second grade he attended a different school than the one at which I worked. That summer he took a summer school class with students from several area schools including "my" school. Riding the bus on the first day of class he sat next to a boy from my school. The other boy boasted to my son that his librarian was an author. My son replied, "Yes. I know. She's my mother." At first the other boy insisted that that couldn't be the case. (To young children, teachers and librarians can't be parents too, you know!) He was finally convinced when I appeared at the bus stop that afternoon to usher my son home. |
Return to the Authors Among Us main page
Last Updated October 31, 2003