Not long ago I read and enjoyed Before They Were Artists, Elizabeth Haidle’s 2021 discussion of various visual artists in graphic novel form, aimed a younger audience. I both enjoyed that book and learned from it, and that led me to pick up Elizabeth Haidle’s 2019 Before They Were Authors: Famous Writers as Kids.
While this was intelligent and enjoyable, I read it without knowing which of the two books came first…but was certain this one did. I say this because the book about visual artists was a bit bolder, and more likely to tackle difficult or sticky topics than this one. On one hand, avoiding difficult topics when writing for kids is understandable, given the common desire to shelter young readers. On the other, writing that when Maya Angelou was seven, “a terrible crisis occurred” just leaves readers confused. (Was there a plague? An explosion?)
That issue aside, this book gives useful introductions to ten quite varied creators: Mark Twain, Maya Angelou, Dr. Seuss, Sandra Cisneros, Roald Dahl, J.K. Rowling, Gene Luen Yang, Beatrix Potter, C. S. Lewis, and Madeleine L’Engle. All of these figures are influential. Most pitch their work to younger audiences, and they tend to be popular/genre writers. Angelou is the main exception, as teens do read her work, but she primarily writes for adults. The writers come from different ethnic and genre traditions, but all come from the 19th through 21st century.
The book’s organization is a blend of the very functional with the somewhat confusing. Each individual story starts with birth and childhood and moves to adulthood and creation (and perhaps, depending on when the writer lived, through death and heritage), addressing personal and artistic challenges along the way. Each starts with cartoonish portrait and a timeline. On the other hand, it wasn’t clear why the stories came in the order they did: Angelou was born decades after Seuss, but precedes him in the book, for example.
A useful book, especially for those who favor graphic novels.
