In Origins of Story, notable writers for children consider how literature, memory, and moral passion serve the writers. Among the seventeen authors represented here are Tom Feelings, Ursula K. Le Guin, Maurice Sendak, Susan Cooper, Sarah Ellis, Katherine Paterson, Jill Paton Walsh, and Virginia Hamilton. These contributing authors reach beyond themselves and their work to discuss vitally important subjects such as home and homelessness, violence and nonviolence, and the nature of heroism. Implicit in their essays is the realization that we have much to learn from literature that mirrors the lives of children.

Story is as new for children as experience itself. And when children's writers are wise, they anticipate the freshness of their audience and reserve for children the choicest of material -- what Walter de la Mare called "the rarest kind of best."

Under the sponsorship of Children's Literature New England (CLNE), a nonprofit educational organization founded in 1987, individuals have met annually on university campuses on both sides of the Atlantic to discuss books and their insight into children's lives. The essays in Origins of Story represent some of the themes of the annual programs. This collection is a treasure trove, an affirmation of the vital connection between children's books and the imagination.