Fan mail from some flounder?

One of the things that happens when you write books that are marketed as Young Adult or childrens is, you get letters from kids who have been assigned to write them in class. It's really obvious, for two reasons: first, the number of letters drops off markedly during the summer months, and second, the class assignments tend to have the same format ("In the first paragraph, tell the author what you liked about his/her book. In the second paragraph, tell the author something about yourself. In the third paragraph, ask the author three questions. Sign your name…").

The three questions part is particularly obvious when the author of the letter really has only one question that they're burning to ask. It's usually something specific, like "What happens to…?" or "How did you ever think of an insubstantial floating blue donkey with wings?" And then they're stuck, so the next two are the sort of general questions that a lot of people ask writers. "Where do you get your ideas?" is really popular; so is "Are your characters real?"

And then there are the questions that betray a more specific class assignment. Chief among them are "What are your influences?" and "What is the theme/meaning of this book?" I mean, really - is there an eleven-to-thirteen-year-old anywhere who cares about the writer's influences unless there's a grade riding on the answer?

Not that I blame the letter-writers. It's the teachers who give them these assignments who enrage me … and I am not using hyperbole here. I am most particularly and especially infuriated by those teachers who tell children that they will get a better grade if the author to whom they write answers the letter. Invariably, those letters do not get forwarded by the publisher for two or three months, and when they do arrive, I'm out of town or working to deadline, and the mail waits another month before I get to it. So the poor kid, through no fault of his or her own, misses out on that grade-boost.

I'm also getting more and more e-mails pleading for an address to which someone can snail-mail an assignment letter directly, almost always in connection with that kind of "extra credit." I don't give my address out on the web or via e-mail, for an assortment of reasons, and I get a bit cross with teachers who expect me to set their students such a bad example.

We won't even discuss the number of teachers who seem to think that all writers are independently wealthy (or perhaps who think that no other teacher in the history of the world has had the brilliant idea of making their students write to a favorite author), and therefore do not have their students enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope with their snail-mail letters. Postage adds up a lot more quickly than you might think.

I like hearing from my readers, really. I don't always have the ability or time to respond right away (and there have been years when nobody at all got an answer, like the one right after my mother died, when I was trying to cope with being her executor and having a book deadline), but I do like hearing. I don't like it when it's forced. Although I confess that one of my favorite letters started "My teacher is making us write this because we read your book in class. I thought it was for younger kids. We are in the seventh grade!"