Sixth Grade
Worksheets
Susan Cooper
Have you ever wanted to become a writer? If you have, Susan Cooper, a successful and well-respected author, has some advice for you. She says that reading is the most important thing that you can do to make you a good writer. Read without ceasing. Read many different kinds of books. Read poetry. Read the classics. Read books for children and books for adults. Read everything. Reading will teach you to recognize the things that make a good story. It will help you to understand grammar. Reading will make you a better writer. Susan Cooper also believes that you should watch very little television. She likens it to a drug, something that numbs the mind and dulls the imagination. Reading engages the mind and welcomes the reader into the world created by the story. When watching television, you are merely a spectator. All of the details have been provided.
Susan Cooper believes that a writer's ideas are formed by their own life: things that they have seen or heard, people they have met, stories they have read, and things that they have experienced. She believes that all of these events are stored in a writer's unconscious mind. They tumble around together and sometimes come together to create something very special.
Susan Cooper's life has given her many experiences that have influenced her writing. She grew up in England and Wales during World War II. As a small child, she remembers many nights spent listening to gunfire and bombs exploding nearby. Some nights, her family sought safety in a bomb shelter. Susan remembers taking books into the shelter and reading them by candlelight. The books were a distraction from all of the frightening noises going on around her. Fear was always a common element in Susan Cooper's childhood. After she became a writer, it became a fixture in the stories that she wrote.
