PAGES : A Break from Grown-up Readers

Writers Amy Tan and Michael Dorris are no strangers to adult readers. And now, they’ve taken up pens to write children’s books.

Tan offers “The Moon Lady,” based on a chapter from “The Joy Luck Club.”

Set in a Shanghai countryside during the 1920s, the story chronicles the adventures of a willful 6-year-old girl during the night of the Moon Festival. Ying-ying falls off a boat, is rescued by a fisherman and meets the Moon Lady, who grants her one wish.

Dorris’ “Morning Girl” tells the story of a gentle brother-sister rivalry set on a Bahamian island in 1492. The date is no accident. Columbus’ diary mentions that one of the first people he saw in the New World was a very young girl.

“I wondered what her life was like,” said Dorris, who also wrote “A Yellow Raft in Blue Water” and, with his wife, Louise Erdrich, “The Crown of Columbus.”

But Columbus’ arrival is only a backdrop to the tale of two children figuring out who they are and why they are so unalike. They are loosely based on Dorris’ children.

“There’s a constant push-pull between siblings in finding solace or frustration in each other,” he said. “But they can find empathy--one of those emotions of grace that can’t be encouraged too much.”