Aga Maksimowska on Wonderful Kid Narrators
It’s not only because I’m a teacher of adolescents and an author of a coming-of-age novel that I am drawn to books with kid narrators. Young people and children have a way of seeing the world that adults are missing. Our days are short, mundane, expected, frazzled, whereas children experience things for the first time much more often than we do. They are surprised, shocked, amazed, scared, bewildered, overwhelmed, and stumped infinitely more often than we are. All of this newness produces wonderfully weird and often outrageous commentary on everything from the ordinary to the extraordinary that life throws their way. Who better to learn from about the world anew than someone who is old enough to know that that over there is a bad guy, but also notice that the bad guy is vulnerable and lost himself. Aga Maksimowska’s short stories and creative non-fiction pieces have appeared in print and online in Australia and Canada, most notably in Kurungabaa, Soliloquies Anthology, The National Post and The Globe and Mail. Her debut novel, Giant, a story of an odd girl’s coming-of-age during the fall of Communism in Poland, was released by Pedlar Press in May. She teaches English and Creative Writing at a Toronto high school.
