Children’s Literature
The Honors section of Children’s Literature with Dr. Miskec is a class that had been taught several times prior to my junior year, but it was not scheduled to be offered that year. The Cormier Honors College, as well as the many Honors professors at Longwood, strive to offer classes that meet the needs and pique the interests of Honors students as often as possible. As such, I asked if the class could be offered during my junior year, and it turned out that over 15 students (which is quite a few for Honors classes at Longwood) ended up enrolled!
The class surpassed my expectations. Rather than just analyzing children’s books and writing book reviews, the entire semester focused on one singular project. Dr. Miskec decided to not just teach us about children’s literature as a genre, but to also teach us how to write for a publisher. She walked us through the process of conducting in-depth, professional research and writing an article worthy of publication in a scholarly journal; but she didn’t stop there. She also helped us polish our articles and compose submission emails, because each student in the class was, in fact, required to submit his or her piece to the international journal Bookbird. None of us were accepted for publication, unfortunately, but we, as undergraduate sophomores, juniors, and seniors, were competing with writers with doctorate degrees whose life work is researching and writing about children’s literature. A couple of my classmates were invited to rework their pieces for reconsideration in another edition of the journal, which was exciting, and we got a very nice letter from the editor praising us and Dr. Miskec saying that our research was by no means on a level unfit for submission even though it wasn’t what they were looking for. Each of our pieces had been taken seriously and actually read. We were honored.
The process of submitting such a significant piece of my own work for judgment by an international editor was nerve-wracking, but such a worthwhile experience. Should I ever choose to write answer a call for papers again, I will understand the process and know that I am capable of producing work that is worthy of consideration. To read my piece on how Easy Reader books are adapted to meet the needs of the classroom overtime, take a look at the document below:
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