“What a splendid book! Michael Armstrong paysattention - thirty years of it - to the stories thatchildren write. We get two for one: the children’sown delightful and intriguing work - I want torush off and write some Wally (age 5) stories ofmy own - and Michael Armstrong’s intenseinterpretations. ”
Allan Ahlberg

"This is real learning at its best, teaching byexample, through painstaking scrutiny of the artof young writers. Absorbing, moving,enlightening, inspiring."
Morag Styles, University of Cambridge

In Children Writing Stories, Michael Armstrong reveals the creative force of children's narrative imagination and shows how this develops through childhood. He provides a new and powerful understanding of the significance of narrative for children’s intellectual growth and for learning and teaching.

The book explores a series of real stories written by children between the ages of five and fifteen, and traces the growth of literary consciousness from the dawn of written narrative in the kindergarten, through the early years of schooling and on into adolescence. Each chapter opens with a story or stories, which the author then goes on to examine in detail, so that the book may be seen as both a select anthology of children’s stories and as a critical account of children’s narrative practice.

This original and provocative book will appeal to teachers, parents, students of education and readers with an interest in literacy, children's writing or narrative theory.