SALT LAKE CITY — For kids, the wonderful thing about reading, says author Avi, "is that they can go beyond themselves."
There are different times, different places, different problems, different ways of looking at things.
But at the same time, "there is a discovery of self," he said.
Reading can help you learn who you are, how you fit into everything else.
"I always tell kids to read what they want, that they shouldn't feel like they have to love a book just because everyone else does. Like what you like," said Avi, one of the headliners Saturday at the KSL/Deseret Book/Deseret News Book Festival at the University of Utah.
"The first step is to simply enjoy," the one-name author said. "The next step is to think about why you like what you do. That's still how I read books."
Avi has written more than 70 books and has won just about every major award given in children's literature. His "Crispin: The Cross of Lead" received the Newbery Medal. "True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle" and "Nothing But the Truth" were both Newbery Honor books. He's received the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the Scott O'Dell Historical Fiction Award and numerous others.
"Writing is hard work," Avi told the audience Saturday, noting that he rewrites his books as many as 60 or 70 times. "The real secret of writing is that writers don't write writing; they write reading. And readers want a good story."
A good story, he said, is "one that makes you want to turn the page". Ideas for such stories can come from anywhere — "all around you," he says — but the best way to find ideas is to read.
"Reading inspires writing," Avi said. "I'm a voracious reader. I always have a book with me. If I don't have a book, it's like I'm missing one of my arms."
Both the importance of reading and the joy it can bring were emphasized throughout the festival by authors from a variety of genres.
"I was raised in a home with lots of books," Avi said. "My mother read to us every night. Fridays were always library days. Every Christmas, birthday, any occasion with presents always included books."
That made him into a good reader, he said, but not necessarily a good student.
"I particularly struggled with writing, with spelling and grammar," Avi said.
Only later did he learn that he had dysgraphia, a condition that is to writing what dyslexia is to reading. But his parents didn't tell him and didn't tell his teachers.
After failing every class his first year in a public high school, Avi went to a private school, and his parents brought in special tutors.
When he was 16, one of those tutors "did something that changed my life," he said.
"When she looked at my writing, she didn't talk about the atrocious spelling and grammar; she talked about my ideas," Avi said. " 'You're an interesting person,' she told me. 'If you wrote better, other people would know it.' My whole universe shifted. I realized I was not just writing for English teachers. I was trying to express ideas. I was writing for an audience."
Avi started his professional writing career as a playwright. But by then he was married and had children. He and his oldest son played a game.
"He would get on my lap and say, 'Tell me a story.' I would say, 'On what?' And he would pick a subject. He always picked quirky things, like a toothpick or a glass or water," Avi said.
A friend suggested that he write down some of those stories. In 1970, "Things That Sometimes Happen" was published, "and it's been children's books ever since," he said.
"While young people and adults share equal emotions and feelings, in kids, they are more intense," Avi said. "In the process of growing up, we learn to keep our emotions in check."
Children also require you to show more than tell, he said.
"If you're writing for adults, and you write that X fell in love with Y, you have a sense of what that means. It's a shortcut," Avi said. "But if you say that in a children's book, it doesn't mean the same. In children's literature, emotional experience is rooted in what happens."
In addition to authors such as Avi, Richard Paul Evans and Brandon Mull, the Book Festival featured activities for kids, entertainment, food vendors, bookstore offerings and author signings and readings. It was the first of what is planned to become an annual event, as part of the Deseret Media Companies' Read Today initiative.
e-mail: carma@desnews.com