Writing, Teaching, and Reading: The Creative World of Rebecca Van Slyke

Beth Bacon: How did your children’s book writing career start?

Rebecca Van Slyke: I have ALWAYS loved children’s books, ever since I was four years old and first found out that my favorite books were actually made by REAL PEOPLE! Ever since then, I wanted to write and illustrate books. I had some encouragement from a college professor, and I continued to pursue writing and illustrating over the next twenty years or so. I got a break from one of my husband’s clients, who ran a publishing company (Bright Ring Publishing) who hired me to do illustrations for her art books for children. I wanted to improve my writing skills (and I needed to add a master’s degree for my teaching), so I decided to go for a degree in writing for children. At the time Vermont College of Fine Arts was the only one offering that degree, so I applied and was accepted. That decision changed my writing life!

Beth: In addition to writing, you also teach 2nd grade. How does one job influence the other?

Rebecca: I use my own writing to show my students the process of where to find ideas, how to write a first draft (and to view that as the first of MANY drafts), how to revise and edit your writing, and how to “publish” it to a form that is ready to share with others. 
As for how teaching helps my writing, I get a lot of material from being around kids all day. 

Beth: Do you have a writing group? If not, how do you work the kinks out of your drafts?

Rebecca: I have a group of close writer friends that I can send a manuscript to when I think it’s close to being ready for my agent to see. I found them through Vermont College and through the SCBWI. I facilitate the Northern Network of our local Western Washington SCBWI, and several of us are a loose group when it comes to critiquing each other’s manuscripts.

Beth: Where do your ideas come from?

Rebecca: All over the place! As I said, being around kids gives me many ideas as well as how real kids talk and act, and what interests them. I also love word play. Sometimes a title comes to me, and then I have to find the story that goes with it. I also have a good memory of what it was like to be a kid, so I can tap into my inner child and access things that happened to me as I was growing up, like hating to go to bed at night.  

Beth: What’s the most memorable interaction you had with a young reader?

Rebecca: I think that would have to be teaching the reluctant readers I have in my class to love books. Some kids are born readers, it seems. Others really have to struggle through several years before they read easily. Until then, they can view books as The Enemy—something they have to wage daily battle with. My goal is to teach them the skills they need to read, and to learn to love books in the process. I love seeing the face of a struggling reader light up as they decode a word or laugh at a really funny story, then ask, “Can I read that?”

See Rebecca in Person! On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 7 PM Secret Garden Books is hosting a reading for a new picture book written by Rebecca Van Slyke: Lana Lynn Howls At The Moon.
 
In this story, Lana Lynn is an intrepid sheep. The other members of her flock are content to nibble grass in the pasture, sip water from the pond, and nap in the meadow. But not Lana Lynn. She wants… adventure! So one night, when the moon is high and the other sheep are asleep, she finds a disguise and dashes into the wild woods to see what life is like as a wolf. It’s fun to run through the wild woods, stay up very late, and howl at the Moon–but is life with the wolf pack everything it seems? Rebecca Van Slyke’s charming depiction of experiencing new things is accented by Anca Sandu’s humorous illustrations.

The event will be at Secret Garden, 2214 NW Market St., Ballard. It is free and the public is invited.

Beth: What’s next for you?

Rebecca: I’m working on several manuscript revisions, waiting for some editorial notes on books, and trying my hand at poetry for a challenge.

About the people in this post

Beth Bacon is the editor of the SCBWI-WWA blog. Her books include I Hate Reading and Blank Space. She earned an MFA in writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She also has a degree in Communication Theory from NYU and a degree in Literature from Harvard University. Beth grew up in Boston, Massachusetts and now lives in the Pacific NW. Visit her site at https://bethbaconauthor.com/.

Rebecca Van Slyke is the author of several books for young readers, including Where Do Pants Go? Lexie The Word Wrangler, Mom School and Dad School. She teaches second grade is a second-grade teacher in Lynden, Washington. She studied marine biology at Olympic Community College, received a teaching degree from Western Washington University, and got an MFA in writing for children from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Rebecca runs the Western Washington Group of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators’ Northern Network. She and her husband have a daughter and a spoiled mini dachshund named Sable.