Review: Kid Authors: True Tales of Childhood from Great Writers

Author: David Stabler

Illustrator: Doogie Horner

Genre: nonfiction

Publisher: Quirk Books

Publication Date: October 10, 2017

Synopsis:

The series that includes Kid Presidents, Kid Artists, and Kid Athletes now chronicles the lives of Kid Authors! Here are true tales of famous writers, from long before they were famous–or even old enough to drive. Did you know:
– Sam Clemens (aka Mark Twain) loved to skip school and make mischief, with his best friend Tom, of course!
– A young J. R. R. Tolkien was bitten by a huge tarantula–or as he called it, -a spider as big as a dragon.-
– Toddler Zora Neale Hurston took her first steps when a wild hog entered her house and started chasing her!
The diverse and inclusive cast includes Roald Dahl, Beverly Cleary, J. K. Rowling, Langston Hughes, Jules Verne, Lewis Carroll, Stan Lee, and many more.

**I received an eARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.**

Kid Authors is a new middle grade (on the lower end of that spectrum, I would say) nonfiction book from Quirk Books in their series of fun stories about famous people when they were younger. Written by David Stabler, the book has many delightful color illustrations by Doogie Horner.

The book covers a diverse selection of authors, although most of them would be familiar to children, and they are mostly American. Some of the stories were more focused on specific events than others, which made them stronger in my opinion, and almost all related back to how they became authors. I found Sherman Alexie’s really interesting, and I didn’t know that Edgar Allen Poe was a foster child! Unfortunately, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s was not much new if you’re familiar with the Little House series.

A paragraph in Langston Hughes’s chapter really stood out to me: he was voted class poet in eighth grade unanimously, but he had not written a poem yet, at least outside of his mind. So he went and started writing to prove himself. That’s like some predestination craziness.

One thing I was a little surprised with was the use of “Indians” to refer to Native Americans all the time. It made sense in the Laura Ingalls Wilder story because of the time period, and there’s a great illustration of an exasperated Native American frustrated about how they’d left for a little and suddenly some settlers moved in. But otherwise, I was surprised they didn’t use Native Americans as well, as it is so much more accurate and I think that’s important in a children’s book.

There are also little facts about other authors’ childhoods in the back, which were pretty fun. The best one was absolutely Earnest Hemingway, that All-American Man, who was dressed in his older sister’s clothes until he was 5 and his mother said he was her daughter “Ernestine”!!!