Review by ELAINE DONG
(www.angelolli.com)

THE WRITE START
A Guide to Nurturing Writing at Every Stage, From Scribbling to Forming Letters and Writing Stories
By Jennifer Hallissy
Publisher: Trumpeter

Jennifer Hallissy has a blog of the same name, The Write Start, which is hugely popular. The book, though, is slightly disappointing. The blog was full of ideas for parents who want to nurture the creative writer in their child. The book, though it has 52 writing activities for kids, reads like a technical how-to on writing.

Writing here means printing letters of the alphabet. There are chapters dedicated to showing parents how to teach kids the right grip of the pencil, how to master shapes, how to strengthen a child’s hands, how to sit for the best writing posture and how to prepare the environment that is conducive for all of the above to happen.

She does have a definition for the different stages of writers – the scribbler who has just started out, the speller who has started forming legible letters, the storyteller who has started, well, telling stories, and the scholar, who are older kids with more experience writing.

The second half of the book is dedicated to the 52 writing activities stated above. For each activity, she offers variations for the four different levels of writers. However, most of it seems to be early writing games geared at really young children, probably the scribbler and the speller.

She gives ideas on things to build. For example, game 17 is about how to build a scoreboard out of a piece of wood, chalkboard paint, baking sheets and screws. The idea is for kids to write their scores on it as they play games. It states that the activity reinforces an important function of writing, which is keeping track, or as writers do, taking notes. It goes on to say that it establishes a connection between doing and writing, action and notation.

It sounds like a very far-fetched connection. Won’t a better activity be to have kids go around the neighbourhood on a treasure hunt where they write down what they find?

Game 32 is about playing post office, which is better than the game above. They make up their own mail, put it in a postbox and it gets delivered. But, it’s only really teaching them how to write addresses and such.

There are other ideas like having a wipeable tablecloth that kids can write on. Hmm. Or keeping a scrapbook, which is not exactly a new idea.

Among the 52, there are probably a handful of good ideas, such as playing doctor and writing out prescriptions, and keeping a travelogue. The rest are very generic suggestions like getting kids to write thank-you notes and postcards, writing letters to a pen pal, keeping a daily journal, and the like.

But none of the activities hint at nurturing creativity. They’re mostly activities that will get kids writing - letters, words and sentences. There’s nothing about constructing a story, developing an idea, formulating plots and brainstorming, all of which can be nurtured even in very young children.

So, if you’re after a how-to on writing, technically, not creatively, this is the book for you. At the back of the book are templates of the alphabet, letters, office memos, thank-you notes and postcards that you could photocopy and use. However, if you’re after a book on creative writing for kids, skip it and read the blog instead.