ISO Craft Books for the hands of children

I teach Creative Writing to Christian Homeschooled tweens and teens online and struggle to find craft books I feel comfortable recommending. I’m not talking about curriculum (we use classics as models and imitate them in class). I’m talking about the students’ own free reading time. I’m sure these books exist and I need your help finding them 😄

For reference, here are a few of my favorites that are NOT appropriate:

❌ A Swim in the Pond in the Rain

❌ Techniques of the Selling Writer

❌ Bird by Bird

❌ The Soul Tells a Story

❌ Writers of the Future anthologies with interspersed essays on craft

Most of these aren’t super explicit, but they do use mild curse words that would scandalize my students or they discuss how to write sexual material. (They don’t scandalize me - I really like them!)

Here are a few I could feel good giving my kids or recommending to their parents:

✅ Mystery & Manners by Flannery O’Connor (but it is a collection of all her talks and essays on all sorts of stuff, so not targeted writing craft. I could give them specific chapters.)

✅ Just picked this up at the Novel Marketing Conference last weekend but haven’t read it yet: A Pencil Grows in Kentucky by my tablemate, Jacqueline Hamilton, inspired by teaching writing to Appalachian young women, with exercises and examples.

✅ CS Lewis’s various letters and essays on writing

✅ Wordsmith by Janey Cheaney - homeschool curriculum, so I’m not sure if they’ll like the idea of more curriculum, but it is really good

What about The Anatomy of Genre by John Truby? (I have it on my TBR pile.)

📚Ok, fellow wordsmiths - please share your wisdom!

@Meredith Davis & @Becca Wierwille I bet I could listen to your podcast episodes and get good ideas!