Where It All Started

Abstract

“Children want to write.” This is the quietly stunning sentence that marked the birth of Heinemann. It is, of course, the opening to Donald Graves’ Writing: Teachers and Children at Work.1 “Children want to write” is not the kind of sentence you would expect an award-winning academic researcher to write. There would normally be some hedge, some qualification: “most children,” “children generally.” It is direct, no throat clearing, no background; it ushered in a new style of writing that would be the signature of Heinemann. The Behind-the-Scenes Story of Don Graves’ First Book That Set the Course for Creating Writers