<p>In this article, I reflect upon using child-authored writing in research with and about young people. As a scholar of girlhood, I focus in particular upon the writing of young girls, but the details and the findings outlined here have purchase beyond gender boundaries and for childhood writers of all ages. I begin by offering a brief history of childhood writing, focusing on some of the recurring concerns and debates around the field, before showing how these themes impact upon my research in practice. I then discuss how to locate and select a child-authored text to use in research, with some ideas on how to represent the findings in subsequent scholarly work. Finally, I conclude by sharing some of the key findings and questions which have arisen from my work with child-authored texts</p>