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Authors at 7
Published by: Seattle's Child
(magazine)
written by news correspondent: Tami Jayne Jackson
When you’re 7 years old, life presents so many possibilities. You can act
up, make a fort or do what two Eastside girls (who never met) did. You can
show off your extraordinary writing talents.
One of the girls types 65 words per minute and has written about 300 short
stories, collected in a binder more than 3 inches thick. The other wrote
and illustrated a book that was published by local Elton-Wolf Publishing
and on the national PTA’s Web site.
Adora Svitak: Creativity at 65 Words a Minute
When 7-year-old fingers fly across the keyboard at least four times faster
than the second hand can tick on the clock and every bullet, vowel and
comma lands in its proper place, the observer sits up and wonders: "Is
this child for real?"
Adora Svitak, who wears a contagious smile, has written more than 300
stories, gleaning ideas from books she reads, vacation spots she has
visited with her family, or simply from thoughts that "just come" to her.
Adora does not look at any text while she types. Instead, she tilts her
head toward the ceiling as if pulling ideas from the ether. A writing
tutor reviews her work, but seldom does she find typing mistakes or errors
in her story's structure.
"Sometimes I get my past and future tenses mixed up," Adora admits.
When she makes up stories, Adora might adopt phrases from bygone eras and
refer to spankings as "sound lashings" and a young girl as "missy" or
"lass". She also includes many different classes of people in her work.
In “Averil’s Adventure,” for instance, Adora wrote of old hags, villagers,
duchesses, counts and magistrates. Then, heroine Averil encounters
intoxicated bums:
"Give me a kiss, missy, and I'll hold you like I'll never let go," the
other man said in a wheedling tone. With horror Averil realized that the
men were drunk! The other man took a jug full to the brim with beer and
took a few swigs."
When asked how she writes with such involvedness and maturity, Adora
replies that she enjoys using big words. Her mother, Joyce Svitak, adds
that both she and Adora's father, John Svitak, who works at Microsoft,
have read to Adora since she was born. Adora’s father still reads
complicated books to her, by authors such as English novelist Jane Austen,
but Adora prefers to read classic chapter books for young readers. She
ingests thick volumes quickly, reading Brain Jacques’ Mossflower in one
day.
Joyce Svitak works as a language interpreter and speaks English, Mandarin
and Cantonese fluently. She also manages Seeds of Learning, a private day
school that Adora attends in the basement of their Redmond home.
As Adora types, the chair she sits in is so big its back remains a full
foot behind her erect torso and her feet dangle at least another foot from
the floor. Because Adora does not kick at the chair or eat paste (as I did
back when I was 7) I marvel some more.
"What do you do for fun? Have you ever taken an IQ test?" I ask, trying to
sound smart, like a reporter should.
Adora responds patiently to my many questions. No, she's never been tested
for "genius." For fun, she writes stories (of course), reads chapter books
or plays with her 9-year-old sister, Adrianna.
It's obvious that Adora loves her sister. She says Adrianna, a musician,
also types very fast and writes compelling stories. Right now, Adora has
no plans for publishing any of her stories. If she ever writes a book, she
might ask Adrianna do the illustrations for it because Adrianna draws very
fun pictures, full of color and imagination.
“Do you realize how very smart you are?” I ask, realizing immediately that
it’s a really dumb question.
Adora has been featured on ABC's Good Morning America and five local TV
programs, including Evening Magazine and Northwest Afternoon. Of course
she knows she's smart. Still, she doesn’t make fun of my question. Her
only answer is to nod slightly, proving she’s not only smart, but patient
as well.
Chloe Freed: Published Author and Fashion Designer
Chloe Freed, now 11, wrote and illustrated an ABCs book, Wouldn’t It Be
Funny If … Animals Ate Alphabet Soup (Elton-Wolf Publishing, 2004), when
she was 7. She created it to teach her then 4-year-old sister Violet to
read, and to enter the 2000-2001 PTA cultural Arts Competition.
"Ever since Chloe was little, she wrote books,” says her mother, Lisa
Freed. “Even when she was potty training, she made potty training books."
To create her ABCs book, Chloe matched different animals to all 26 letters
in the alphabet and then drew them doing something fun or silly with an
item that started with the same letter.
She wrote "it would be strange if . .."
bears wore bonnets . . .
fish had feathers . . .
jellyfish juggled . . .
Chloe chose to focus her book on animals because, years ago, she and her
family visited Costa Rica where she learned that the clearing of rain
forests was making many of the beasts extinct. She also determined, if her
book ever makes a profit, that she will donate some proceeds to help
animals in local zoos.
To help Chloe draw all of the book's illustrations in time for the PTA
competition, Lisa Freed set reasonable goals for her daughter and then
actively reminded Chloe to draw at least one picture every day. "There
were times when Chloe moaned and would say: 'I don't think I can finish,'"
he mother remembers.
Nowadays, when Chloe gives someone advice about writing a book, she says
they should realize it is very hard work to begin with.
"You have to be willing to do things over," she says. "Writing a book
helped me learn to work really hard, to stick with it and use
self-discipline."
Speaking like a seasoned writer, Chloe also suggests that anyone who wants
to write a story should "pick out a subject you really like. Make up a
story for it and then have someone else read it to help you revise it."
Chloe readily admits she's lucky to have work-at-home parents. Her dad,
Robert Freed, taught her how to scan her drawings into the computer.
That's how she added professional-looking fonts to each page; including
the alphabet letters and the story line. In the end, Chloe did all of the
design and layout work by herself.
While Chloe's school had asked for submissions of songs, drawings and
poetry for the PTA competition, Chloe submitted her book and created a new
category of for it. After she won first place nationally, the PTA posted
her book, in its entirety, on the national PTA Web site.
After much work, the family was able to find a local publisher to publish
the book..
Chloe volunteers to read her book at public libraries, and her school,
Arrowhead Elementary in Kenmore, also keeps copies in its library.
What else does a young girl do when she has two artistic, work-at-home
graphics designers for parents and a full lineage of artistic relatives
who work as photographers, sculptors and merchants? According to Chloe,
she makes the best of it and learns to express creativity every chance she
gets.
While Chloe has not written any new books, she has created a catalog of a
fashion line she designed called "Hippo Hippi's."
In her drawings for that effort, colorfully clad women are decked out in
mini skirts, bell-bottom pants, smocks and all sorts of accessories. All
of the outfits are complete with sandals, flip-flops or clog-style shoes.
In one of Chloe's images, a fashion model carries a handbag shaped like a
human hand, complete with gaudy rings and dark nail polish. In another,
the handbag is shaped like a jeweled crown.
When Chloe’s not reading, drawing or going to school, she’s either playing
tennis or the piano. Lisa Freed says sometimes Chloe’s piano teacher
scolds her for jazzing up a song when she's supposed to learn it in the
traditional format first. (Chloe likes jazz music the best.)
She is also a great snorkeler and loves swimming in her grandmother's pool
in California. This year she won the C.P. Johnson Humanitarian Award at
Arrowhead Elementary, given to a student who regularly treats others with
respect and kindness.
Tami Jayne Jackson is a freelance writer living in Kent.
~ end ~
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