9-26-12: A Baltimore Author at Heart

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Snyder-0926.mp3

What book from childhood still stays with you?  Maybe it’s Danny, the Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl, or A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle.  How has it affected your thinking over the years? What role do children’s book authors play in forming children’s ideas and values?Baltimore native Laurel Snyder thinks quite a big one. The author of the children’s book Bigger Than a Breadbox wrote a piece for the website OccupyWriters, in which she wrote “Children’s literature is, much of the time, subversive and wild and loud, because it is written for an audience that wants such things. For kids, the very act of living is the act of challenging, questioning, shouting. Children are radicals.”

Here, Sheilah talks with Laurel about the books that inspired her, what draws her to her native Baltimore--and how she finds time to write with two kids. (A tip--she says the app Freedom, which won't allow you to go online--is a great help.)

Laurel Snyder will be on a panel of novelists at the Baltimore Book Festival this Saturday, all of whom will be discussing writing and growing up in Baltimore.  It's at 5:30 in the Children's Book Tent.