Literary Influences

Which author, book and/or movie has influenced you the most?

by Rebecca Cantrell

I know you probably expect me to list some great literary fiction that I love, like Doris Lessing and Elie Wiesel. Or maybe thriller writers I’ve gotten into lately, like James Rollins and Brent Ghelfi. Or maybe mystery writers that make me think, like Anne Perry or Arianna Franklin. And all of those would be perfectly true.

But I’m going to talk instead about books I read aloud, because they’ve influenced me a great deal. I read aloud to my son. A lot. We stop at the bookstore almost every day after school to do homework, drink a milk, and read.

Now the books we read lean more toward The Edge Chronicles and Spacecraft and Vehicles of the Entire Star Wars Saga, but back in the day we read a lot of Doctor Seuss and Margaret Wise Brown (Good Night Moon, The Runaway Bunny). In a book you are going to read, say 50 times, you notice every single word. That’s where I understood the genius of these writers.Doctor Seuss and Margaret Wise Brown OWN you as a reader. You can’t not put the stress where they want you too. “I ran and found a Brickel bush. I hid myself away. I got brickels in my britches, but I stayed there anyway.”or “Good-night room, good night moon.”

If you compare this to say “Max and the Magic Pony.” you understand, painfully, the difference between great and barely good enough. “Max and the Magic Pony” is a perfectly fine story, but the prose is unreadable. My son loved it and wanted to read it every night. And it was horrible. Every single time. I read that book 21 times before it “accidentally” fell behind the bookcase and did not resurface for 2 years.

But I could read “Spooky Empty Pants” or “Good-Night Moon” every single day (and did some weeks). Why? Because the authors understood sentence rhythm. They knew that each word matters, and they always picked the right ones.

Sure, I heard about that in college when I was taking creative writing. But reading good children’s books was an enforced lesson in poetry. It wasn’t until I had to read every single word in a story over and over and over that I got it deep in my bones: Every word matters. It’s not just the meaning. It’s the sound. It’s the stress. I learned to channel Dr. Seuss, and it helps my writing.

On September 22, 2009   /   Rebecca Cantrell   /   Leave a comment