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When you write kids’ books, there’s often a parent component. Duh. Kids have parents. So what?

Get Rid of Adults

One recommendation for dealing with parents is to get rid of them. Send them out of town for work; get rid of at least one parent through death, divorce or neglect; stick them in the background and barely mention them. There’s good reason to suggest getting rid of parents. After all, a main character MUST solve his/her own problems and a well-meaning parent could ruin your story.

Family Stories

But what if this is a family story? As I said last week, I’m reading through Please Understand Me II: Temperament, Character, Intelligence, a book about the Briggs-Meyers types of personalities and Chapter 8 was an amazing revelation. It’s about Parenting!

Personality Type as a Child. It goes through an explanation of how a basic personality type would be played out as a child. An Idealist Child (NF, including INFT, INFP, ENFT, ENFP) would be soulful, emotional and self-examining.

Personality Type as a Parent. Likewise, the parenting style of the different types is explained. An Artisan Parent (SP, including ISPN, ESPN, ISPT, ESPT) has a hands-off style, letting kids learn lessons on their own.

Combination of Parent-Child. What happens when one personality style is in charge of another, like in the parent-child relationship? They might clash, or they might bring out the best in each other. For example an Artisan Parent (SP) and an Idealist (NF) kid is explained like this:

Although they can have some trouble understanding each other, Artisan parents can be valuable models for their Idealist children. NF kids tend to get lost in abstraction and a self-absorbed search for meanings and portents , and the SP’s warm embrace of immediacy can be an important lesson for them. p.277

You may not want to be so strict in figuring out what personality type the parents and kids actually are (though it does help with character development). But it’s interesting reading through the different types of interaction between kids/parents. Of course, this is the “nature” part of the equation and you’ll want to add the “nurture” part through your story.

Personally, I try to get rid of parents. I agree that’s best. But sometimes–often, for me–the story is partly ABOUT that parent-child relationship. Especially for middle grade novels, parents and a kid’s relationship to them is extremely important. In those cases, this is a good resource for figuring out where the conflicts might lie and how to exploit the conflict for an exciting story.

I polished off the cover for Albert at the Zoo early last week, and I'm pretty pleased with the results. It's a nice looking cover. I think it relates to the first book well.

Steve

A picture book I worked on last year, written by Paul Wood and titled "Here Comes Cousin Albert" is now available for pre-order on Amazon!

Here's the cover as well as a few of the interior illustrations.














CLICK HERE TO ORDER A COPY!

Steve

Ebook: How to Write a Children’s Picture Book

It started out as 30 Days to a Stronger Picture Book. But now, (drum roll, please), it’s an Ebook. Expanded from it’s original format, it now includes new sections on writing rhymed verse for a picture book, and many examples of different types of texts.

How to Write a Children’s Picture Book includes 36 self-paced lessons on every aspect of writing, editing and selling your children’s picture book.

Basics of Writing a Children’s Picture Book

Start your journey toward publishing by studying the basics of children’s picture books: number of pages, word count, audience, setting, characters, words, messages, morals, themes, voice and more.

The Unique Writing Process for a Children’s Picture Book

Once you understand the basic structure of a children’s picture book, it’s time to choose a topic and write your first draft. Learn topics to avoid and perennial topics. Special techniques for editing your picture book manuscript are also covered.

Typical Picture Book Genres

If you want to write a specific type of children’s picture book, you’ll find tips here for humor, rhyming text, poetry collections, picture book mystery, picture book biography, creative non-fiction picture book, and the ABC picture book.

How to Submit Your Children’s Picture Book

Your story is done? Learn the biggest mistake people make when submitting to a children’s book publisher and how you can avoid it. How do you find the name of an editor? What about self-publishing?

Download your pdf immediately.
Order NOW!

Related posts:

1. Top 10 Picture Book Topics to Avoid
2. Research Competition
3. Picture Book 4

First of all, let me assure you that nothing - absolutely nothing - is going to change at either of my blogs.

You have filled my life with such joy and creativity that nothing (well almost nothing) will stop what we're doing here. I love to share my creative ideas with you and I love to read your blogs and your comments to my posts.

Actually, I can't think of much of anything I'd rather do than communicate with you.

That being said, my new business website is up and ready to go. Would you do me two favors? Please go to my website and tell me what you think. Then please share my website with anyone you know who might even remotely need a writer, want a speaker, or need to spark some creativity in complacent employees. I want to do it all.

Creative people come up with creative ideas. I decided since freelance work is so scarce right now, I was going to market myself. With your help, I can get my website circulating.


Thank you so much.

I can't leave you without a creative writing exercise to do together. So let me think for a minute. How about if you (or your kids) personify your pencil.

Here's what I might say:
I am Jan's pencil. I can tell when she's stressed out because she chews my eraser down to the metal. I can tell when she's in a hurry because she moves me way faster than I'd like to go. Sometimes my lead breaks. Then Jan has the nerve to shove me into a grinder until I have a point again. When Jan is happy she uses me to write about her family and pets......

You get the idea! Give it a try. Have fun. Let your kids do this too. In fact, do it at the same time and then compare notes. Remember writing is fun. It's therapeutic. Keep wallowing in the love of language! Spill your joy right onto your papers!


Oh! I almost forgot! My new business website can be found at http://www.ignitetowrite.com/
Really...please let me know what you think. I welcome your advice, suggestions, and criticism.

The Wolf & the Kid (Aesop's Fable); watercolor

This, of course, is just my line drawing for one of Aesops Fables. I'll be working on the color image this weekend. The fable: The Kid & the Wolf. A kid, returning without protection from the pasture, was pursued by a wolf. Seeing he could not escape, he turned round, and said "I know, friend wolf, that I must be your prey, but before I die I would ask of you one favor you will play me a tune to which I may dance." The wolf complied, and while he was piping and the kid was dancing, some hounds hearing the sound ran up and began chasing the wolf. Turning to the kid, he said, "It is just what I deserve, for I, who am only a butcher, should not have turned piper to please you." The moral of the story: In time of dire need, clever thinking is a key or Outwit your enemy to save your skin.

Here's a rapid-fire illustration/logo job I did for a charity event benefiting kids with cancer. This one is a little bit Russell Benfanti, a little Bob Staake, and a whole lot of what you'll get out of me with no pencil sketch or pre-conceived ideas in my head. This whole thing took me about three hours, start to finish.

Visit my website.

This is another illustration I've completed in the efforts of building more samples of children in my portfolio. This was much faster than the "Summer Fun" image I completed early January and was tremendous fun as well. Looks like I'm in for a great month!

Sorry to take so long in updating this blog, but Internet access has been spotty at best. I’m sitting in an Internet café called Ugly Mugs in Avon, NC on Hatteras Island, and even here over the past half hour the connection has been intermittent.

So, here’s the lowdown:

The first stop on the trip from home (just outside of Boston, MA) was Rhode Island College where I was finishing a 5-day stint as a faculty member of the first annual A.S.T.A.L Writers Institute . It was the final day. Here’s a photo of the whole group in front of the van.

Then southward.

DISASTER #1:  NO RADIO
As I wrote in my last posting, DISASTER #1 occurred around New Haven: the antenna fell off the car. Yikes! Oh well, onward… 

After a quick visit with a friend in Philadelphia, it was down to National Public Radio’s headquarters in DC for a quick-and-dirty lesson in recording sound. They told me that the broadcast of my 2^nd piece for NPR, where we’re packing for the trip, was delayed because apparently they want to hold off until they get the 3^rd piece in hand. It’s even possible that they’ll start our trip without the packing piece – so it’d begin with whatever story I record next. (Boy, I sure hope I come up with something good!) Here I am with NPR announcer Robert Siegel, and also with “All Things Considered” Senior Producer Art Silverman.

From there it was a loooong drive down to North Carolina. Rush hour traffic from hell in the Virginia Beach area. Arrived in Avon, NC around 9PM.

Here’s the thing about our Outer Banks visit. We built this into our route schedule as a nice, easy beginning for our trip -- my family comes out here every year together with our Polish friends from Connecticut and Philadelphia. It’s always fun, because our friends are fun – and some of them have kids the same age as ours so everyone is happy. Sure, it’s hot outside -- and I’m definitely not a beach person. Still, I think of this as my central-air-conditioning holiday. We do beach fires at night, or hang out in the hot tub. All good.

Yesterday (Thursday) we visited the terrific Manteo Booksellers. Here I am with the store’s owner, Steve Brumfield.



It was also Lucy’s 8^th birthday, which was all very nice...UNTIL...at the end of the day came DISASTER #2:

Lucy has developed ‘pink-eye’—conjunctivitis, which she caught from Natalia, one of our friend’s kids. Yikes! This has been a bit of a crisis because 1) it’s not comfortable for her, 2) it’s very contagious, and 3) we’ve been scrambling to find a doctor and get her a prescription for Erythromycin. Lucy should be using it every four hours, but so far we’ve been unable to make contact with any here in the middle of nowhere. We don’t know any local doctors, and today is Friday so we’re finding that many physician offices are closed today, and others will be heading out for the weekend shortly. Plus, we’ll be leaving on Sunday for Atlanta so we’re in a tizzy trying to figure this out today! Tension is high. Not sure what we’ll do, but like everything else, we’ll figure it out somehow…

DISASTER #2:  LUCY HAS PINK-EYE
 

On the brighter side: Looks like we have our antenna situation figured out. A special part needed to be ordered and it was kind of a biggish deal, but we’ve arranged to get the whole thing replaced at a Honda Dealer in College Station, TX on July 6. Until then, we’ll just have to hum a lot… :-)

Sunday we’re off to Atlanta. Stay tuned!

-- Mark

www.markpeterhughes.com

P.S. Update 6/30 1:15pm:  We finally managed to get the eye goo for Lucy.  It required a little devilish cleverness (which I will not detail here for fear of a criminal investigation...just kidding) but now all is well.  Onward!  :-)