So You Want To Write Books For Children?

A few years back I was working on a non-fiction book with writing partner Kim Messinger. The subject was inclusion in regards to children with special needs. Kim is a director of a preschool on the East Coast. She has hundreds and hundreds of children's books.

One day we started talking about what she thought was missing in the children's books being published today.

Her complaints started with language. She says people always underestimate how smart children are. They write down to them. The language in these books should be much richer, she said. "Children deserve that.''

Her next biggest complaint was the lack of stories that parent and child could read together that they could relate to together. I guess she wasn't enamored with stories about farting dogs and pigeons driving buses. For now I'm going to be calling these missing stories feel-good, parent-child stories.

That got me curious. I went to the bookstore and looked around. There were funny books and books with cute ideas but I couldn't find many heart-warming, every-day morality tales that a parent would be happy to read to their child. And very, very few with rich language.

I don't have children so I started bugging her about what 4, 5 and 6-year-olds talk about. What's important to them at that age. How did she relate to her own children and the hundreds that have attended her school.

I came up with three bare-boned stories/main characters and showed them to Kim. From there we rewrote and edited them together and came out with what we considered three fairly good picture book manuscripts.

I thought to myself, "Hey I can do this. No problem. I've found a new career.''

I emailed the stories to an old newspaper colleague of mine. I have great respect for this guy as both a writer and editor. I was expecting rave reviews and a few minutes of basking in the glow of his applause and autograph-seeking.

But first there was shock and surprise. He could not believe that an old, hard-bitten, no-nonsense, news editor would write children's books.

Then it was my turn to be shocked and surprised. He went on a three-page rant that could be summarized as: Every Joker Thinks They Can Write a Warm, Fuzzy Children's Story. You Loser. Something like that. And he was right. It was a wake-up call I needed and something I think everyone needs to remember. Not the loser part. The other part.

Michael LaLumiere