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Saturday, July 26, 2025

Questions to an author

by

20130707

There are few ex­pe­ri­ences that match the joy on stu­dents' faces when they come face-to-face with an au­thor. Our chil­dren–like chil­dren every­where–en­joy books that re­flect them­selves and their cul­ture. I re­alised this more than ever when 35 ten-year-old stu­dents in Grade Four who come to me for li­brary class­es at the In­ter­na­tion­al School of Port-of-Spain got to meet Bet­ty Pe­ter, au­thor of Brown Sug­ar and Spice, a his­tor­i­cal nov­el set in Trinidad, Grena­da and St Lu­cia.

I am al­ways amazed at the ques­tions stu­dents ask and the en­thu­si­asm that they ex­press when they dis­cov­er lo­cal lit­er­a­ture.The first ques­tion that popped up for Pe­ter was: "What ad­vice would you give us about writ­ing?"Pe­ter an­swered: "Nev­er lose sight of a re­al­ly good idea. Get your idea writ­ten down im­me­di­ate­ly. Be will­ing to rewrite."Boys as well as girls en­joyed Pe­ter's his­tor­i­cal nov­el about Har­ri­et's ad­ven­tures in the Caribbean dur­ing World War II. Boys were not put off that the main char­ac­ter is a girl.

"What they seem to re­late to is that it is a sto­ry about fam­i­ly," Pe­ter says.Stu­dents' ini­tial cu­rios­i­ty led to ques­tions such as: "How did you get the name for your book?"They quick­ly move to ques­tions that sep­a­rate fact from fic­tion in the book and asked: "When you were writ­ing the play in the book, were you re­al­ly think­ing like a play and not a book? Did the cook re­al­ly kill a chick­en? Did you re­al­ly ride a don­key to school?"

Fi­nal­ly, they re­alised they could ask a gen­er­al ques­tion to dis­tin­guish which parts of the nov­el were re­al and which parts were made up."What parts in the book hap­pened and which parts were ex­ag­ger­at­ed? Which parts were em­bell­ished?" they asked.Many of the ques­tions tar­get­ed the writ­ing process.Do you ever write so fast you leave words out? Do you get more ideas while you're writ­ing? How do you know when you've writ­ten some­thing good?

To the last ques­tion, Pe­ter replied, "You re­al­ly have to feel it in­side. Of course you al­ways try to im­prove what you wrote."Stu­dents then asked: "Where do you get ideas to write about? How do you know when to end a book? Do you just end when you have no more thoughts?"Pe­ter point­ed out that the nov­el be­gins with the be­gin­ning of World War II and ends with the end of the war so that the stu­dents could un­der­stand dif­fer­ent pos­si­bil­i­ties for the struc­ture of a nov­el.

When we had read Brown Sug­ar and Spice to­geth­er, we iden­ti­fied fig­ures of speech and var­i­ous lit­er­ary el­e­ments. Still, I was sur­prised when a stu­dent asked: "How is it so easy for you to come up with al­lit­er­a­tion?"My favourite ques­tion was: "When did you get the idea that your life was so in­ter­est­ing you should write about it for oth­ers to read?"They asked: "What do you like bet­ter: the sus­pense or the hu­mour in the nov­el?"

When Pe­ter turned the ta­bles on them, they said they liked the hu­mour even more than the sus­pense in her nov­el.Even­tu­al­ly, stu­dents be­gan to seek ad­vice about their own writ­ing. "When I'm writ­ing I find there's no way to stop. How do you find a place to stop?"

Stu­dents talked about Pe­ter's vis­it the en­tire year.

I was equal­ly im­pressed with the ques­tions I got from Stan­dard Four stu­dents at St Joseph Boys' RC School who read Pe­ter's book as well as Leg­end of the St Ann's Flood, the book I had writ­ten about the 1993 flood in St Ann's. When their teach­ers, Mar­vin Lib­ert and Ian John­son in­vit­ed me to talk about Leg­end of the St Ann's Flood, I re­alised these two teach­ers have boys pas­sion­ate about read­ing. Their teach­ers read to them every day, and the boys read at home.

Among the ques­tions they asked were: "How many times did you write this book over? Which folk­lore char­ac­ter scares you the most and which folk­lore char­ac­ter do you like the most? How did you come up with the douens as char­ac­ters in the sto­ry? Why did you choose to put folk­lore char­ac­ters in a sto­ry about a flood? How did you feel up­on com­ple­tion of the book? Who was your favourite and least favourite char­ac­ters?"

Af­ter prob­ing my own back­ground, they asked: "Did you get in­for­ma­tion from your child­hood to write this book?" That, I thought, is a strange ques­tion be­cause it's such a Trinida­di­an book. Be­sides, I had said that I wrote the book for my son, Jairz­in­ho, be­cause he kept ask­ing me to read him a Trinida­di­an book when he was ten, and I couldn't find any.

A stu­dent asked: "Did any­one pick on you in school?" That's when I knew that I had drawn on my own ex­pe­ri­ences in school about bul­ly­ing and un­fair­ness to write this nov­el. Be­ing as­tute read­ers, these stu­dents re­alised that there was some­thing deep­er that the rea­sons I was giv­ing them for writ­ing the book.Once again, I couldn't help but mar­vel at the ques­tions read­ers ask.

�2 Next week: The most com­mon ques­tions about read­ing and chil­dren that par­ents ask me.


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