Alina Diaconu

Why I started writing

I grew up in a house where stories were told at night, slowly, in the warm light of a table lamp. My grandmother wove them out of nothing: a cloud, a bird that forgot how to sing, a candlestick we'd left burning. They weren't lessons. They were lingerings. And the child I was learned to receive them just so, like gifts that ask for nothing in return.

For a long time I believed stories belonged to someone. Then, one morning, I understood that stories belong to no one, they only pass through the few who have the time to listen to them. That is how my books began: from listening, not from planning.

„Stories aren't written. They settle, slowly, onto the lap of someone who has time."

Why I write for children

Children are the only readers who still believe a book can change the day. And if a book really did change their day, they don't forget. They remember the bear cub who climbed to the treetop to help a lost worm, the sad monster made of our rubbish, the doe who was still breathing. A child's memory is gentle and exact. It's a reader you cannot fool.

I didn't return to childhood. I never left far enough for a return to be needed. I stayed at a point from which you can clearly hear their questions: 'why,' 'what if,' 'how is it done.' My books are born between these three questions.

How my books are born

I sit with each story for a long time before I write it. Sometimes for months. I let it settle, like a glass of water left on the nightstand, until by morning the water clears on its own. Only then do I write the first word. The rest of the book follows that word. If I chose it well, the path becomes clear. If not, I go back and wait for another morning.

I write on paper, first. Then I typeset. I watch the children around me a great deal: their courage, the questions they don't ask aloud, the way they stroke their own hair when they're tired. From there I take what I have to take. The rest is craft, and the illustrators I work alongside.

A few books I didn't write alone all the way through. „Dințișorii sunt prietenii mei” was made together with a dentist, so that the advice in it would be true, not merely lovely. When a story crosses into someone else's field, I call them to my side.

Why I write for children aged 3 to 11

The little ones, from three years old, receive the world without filters. All emotions carry the same weight: joy and fear, wonder and longing. They don't yet know how to hide their sadness or to measure their excitement. And that is exactly why they need words. Not big words, but the right words. For them I wrote the „I Am Responsible!” collection, about caring for your own body, and the stories meant to be read aloud at night.

Then comes the age when a child begins to look outward, at the world. They want to know where the rubbish ends up, why the glaciers are melting, what happens to a forest that has been cut down. That is where the „Adventures Saving the Planet” collection was born, four books for children aged 5 to 11, in which David finds answers without being frightened.

My books don't solve. They put a name on what the child feels and show them one gesture they can make themselves, today. The rest comes on its own.

„Children don't need books that teach them. They need books that recognise them."

What you won't find in my books

I don't write books that teach. I don't write books that correct. I have no morals crammed in at the end, no characters made specially to prove a point, no ending with 'now you understand why…'. Children know when a book is preaching at them, and they defend themselves. Rightly so.

Nor do I write books that frighten. You can speak to a child about an ailing planet, a felled forest or a wounded doe without leaving them holding a fear they can do nothing with. Every time, there is also a gesture within reach: a root planted, a light switched off, a battery taken where it belongs.

I write books that embrace. Books parents read aloud at night, books that stay in a family's memory long after the last page has closed. Books that don't tell children how to be, but tell them they can be just as they are.