Teaching Creativity

This 10 Year Old Could
Inspire YOUR Kids

Creativity can be hard to come by.

It seems to decrease with age. It certainly seems to decrease with exposure to passive media, like TV and video games.

Thus, parents can find themselves dismayed when their children seem unable to tap into their innate creativity.

I may have the cure.

Natalie Tinti

Natalie Tinti is a 10 year old as I write this (in 2010). She is a writer and illustrator. She is teaching creativity, and I'm not sure she even knows it!

I know I'm learning from her. And I'm 48!

I reviewed her first book, the award-winning Sewing a Friendship, and I've now reviewed her second, which is 180 pages long.

Clearly Natalie has no shortage of creativity. Hear from Natalie herself:

this page so you can show your child this inspiring video of Natalie on the news!

Natalie is an illustrator extraordinaire, but as a writer what most impresses me is her mastery of the essentials of storytelling. There isn't a writer alive who couldn't learn something from her wildly imaginative prose. Here's the first paragraph from her second book:

As the sun glittered through the blue shimmering sky, it stood tall and watched the children play, the plants catch their food, and animals tan their fur in the bright light. The sun did not make the sky speechless with its colors of warmness, but with a warm rhythm of music that filled the day with colorful moments for Mother Nature. The sun shined over to the snoring enjoyable wind that was in his rest of dreams that were full of music dancing in the sky. When he snored, it made a rhythm for his dream.

Note the uninhibited imagery and description. Note how she literally brings the world alive, making plants, sun and wind alike awake and aware.

Natalie creates distinct characters and tells a story that - like all great fiction - provides characters to identify with as we experience their highs and lows.

May I make a suggestion? Buy Natalie's Sewing a Friendship books. Children will enjoy them because they're simply good and joyous works of uplifting fiction. But just as importantly, children can be inspired by these. Natalie's work is proof of what children are capable of.

The next time your child seems glued to the television and insists there's nothing else to do, wouldn't it be nice to be able to say, "That's the silliest thing I've ever heard," and point to Natalie's books?

Sewing a Friendship on Amazon!

Best Children's Books - Find Read or Write Home Page.