Children’s books are a hot genre right now. With libraries closed, more parents are purchasing children’s books than ever before, and more authors are trying their hand at writing a children’s book. How hard could it be to write a children’s book? It turns out very hard or at least it’s hard to write a book that parents want to buy and that children want to hear.
As a parent of a two-year-old and an almost one year old, I have learned that there are a lot of mediocre children’s books out there.
How do you write a children’s book that connects with both children and parents? I asked Jennifer Grant. She’s an award-winning author and an editor who writes for both adults and children and her most recent book is A Little Blue Bottle, a picture book about grief.
How did you get into writing children’s books?
Jennifer: I started my writing journey as a columnist for newspapers, and I wrote a lot about parenting and family issues and health. That evolved into writing memoir about raising children. My kids are now 18, 20, 22, and 24. But when they were little, and I was trying to figure out how to be a parent and discern what messages to listen to. I wanted to discern what really mattered so I dug into being a writer of parenting books.
I wasn’t writing for children, but I was writing about what it was like to raise them. When they got older, I missed having all those children’s books around. We had a huge practice of going to the library a couple times a week and bringing home stacks and stacks of picture books. And as you say, there were a lot of them that really were pretty mediocre, not only the writing and the quality of the storytelling, but some of the illustrations and other production values were really substandard.
I started thinking I would love to add something of value to children’s literature, particularly as a person of faith. I would love to write books that dealt with spirituality and sparked curiosity in children about spirituality yet weren’t heavy handed or trying to just teach them something. I didn’t want it to be like a Sunday school lesson, but something that would invite them to consider whether God was with them.
My new book, A Little Blue Bottle (Affiliate Link), is about a little girl coming to terms with loss and with the loss of a neighbor who had died, but is wondering “Is God with me right now? Does God know when I’m suffering?”
My journey into writing for children started about four or five years ago. I did some consulting work with a publisher who then later said, “How about writing your own book?” I was asked to write about the fruit of the spirit, and that was my first picture book for children, which is called Maybe God is Like That Too. I was hoping to present kids, in a fresh way, the ideas around the fruit of the spirit in a way that might capture their attention and also be interesting to the parents who have to read these things over and over to their kids, as you know.
Now I’ve published three picture books for children, and I have several more coming out over the next couple of years. It has been a real delight.
Unfortunately, I can’t go speak at schools and read the books at preschools right now. But I look forward again to being in a room with all the little hands asking questions and pointing out all the dogs in the books. I love the kind of great transparent interactions that I get from little listeners.
Children’s Books as Performance Pieces
Thomas: What’s interesting about children’s books is that they are audiobooks, really. You have to think about them as a piece of performance. As an author, you can go and perform the book, like how the ancient writers of old like Herodotus would go from town to town in Greece performing his histories. They weren’t just meant to be written down in the scroll. He would perform them and give the great speeches of the generals, adding a sense of drama. Children’s books are that same way – they’re like the last vestige of the old world because that’s how all books were in olden times.
In the book of James, it says, “I don’t want you to be hearers of the word only. I want you to be doers of the word, not just hearers.” The assumption was that the Bible would be heard, and the assumption is that children’s books are going to be heard.
How do you take an idea and turn it into a book for children?
Jennifer: It’s different depending on the project. With the book about the fruit of the spirit, the publisher had that idea and brought it to me. I looked at what other books were available on the fruit of the spirit, and I couldn’t find any that I really loved. A lot of them showed sort of a fruit bowl on somebody’s kitchen table and would say things like “joy is like a banana.” It was kind of predictable and a little sing-song, not something I would have liked to read to my children.
I thought about what would be different. How could I express these things to a kid in a way that would be surprising and relatable? I started sketching out different ideas of who could be the characters in such a story. I came up with this backstory about a grandmother who was raising her grandchild in the city and how the child saw so many people, with so much activity and noise and traffic, but wondered where was God?
He asks his grandmother at the beginning, “I see all these people. I see the city, but I never have seen God.” She directs him toward looking for evidence of God’s spirit, saying, “When you see joy, when you see peace, when you see kindness.” So he goes through his day looking for evidence of the Holy Spirit.
To your point about books being made to be read aloud, that’s a big part of my process. I read it all aloud over and over because I remember sitting there reading really poorly rhymed or just clunky prose to my children. It’s super important to me that it won’t have a kind of rhyme that will stick in their ears and make them want to run outside and shout. So a big part of my process is to read them aloud and to kind of play with poetry, not in a predictable rhyming way, but in a way that just is pleasing.
The Importance of Structure in Children’s Books
Thomas: I have observed is that children crave structure. They love knowing where the boundaries are and what the structure is. In a well-structured book, they come back to that over and over again and find that as a source of comfort. The books that my daughter goes back to are the books that are well structured.
Now, it doesn’t have to be rhyming, but the book will lay out its structure at the beginning, and the books that keep to that structure are the books that she wants to come back to. Where authors often get fast and loose is with the meter, and my daughter hates that. If you set up a meter and you break it, that’s jarring for her and a little disorienting.
Authors like Dr. Seuss never break their meter, at least not in any of the books I’ve read. He follows that as if it’s a religious guideline, and he created his own meter.
How do you structure a book to be a kind of safe place for a child to come back to?
Jennifer: To your point about children really loving structure and predictability, completely right in our parenting, but also in writing for them. They love a refrain. When I’m reading my books, “Maybe God is Like That Too” and “Maybe I Can Love My Neighbor Too,” there’s a refrain throughout the book. What’s fun is when I’m reading it to a class or a preschool chapel, the kids start anticipating it and getting excited so they can say it. By the end, they’re saying it aloud with me.
There’s something comforting and secure, and it’s also kind of exciting when a child figures it out, “Oh, this is going to keep repeating. This is important.” So that’s another gift we can give to kids in our books.
Structure is really important. A big mistake that I see with new authors who haven’t done this a lot is that they think because reading a beautiful picture book is such an easy and flowy experience, they think it just tumbled off the tongue of the author. In reality, that person has probably rewritten it more times than you can count. Although it could be only 300 words or 500 words, those words have been so carefully chosen.
In my own process, usually a first draft of a picture book can be 1,500 or 2,000 words long, which is about four times as long as it should be. That’s how I get the backstory of the characters, figuring out what’s going to happen and when. Then I really try to dial down and take seriously the structure in the story.
- What does the character want?
- What are the obstacles?
- How do we resolve that?
When I’m working with a client who’s got a wonderful idea for a character or a story but doesn’t have that structure, the story meanders off, and I know that the child’s attention would as well. At that point, I encourage them to go back to basics and say, “Let’s look at this as though you’re writing a book for adults. Who’s your character? What is the story?”
We know those classic stories of a human fight against nature or against someone else. I encourage them to look at the three-act structure or however many acts are appropriate. That often helps a person remember that this is just like a book for adults. It’s really satisfying when it comes to a wonderful resolution after all the challenge and high stakes.
Types of Story Structures
Thomas: You can have all those conflicts in a children’s book. There’s Pooh against himself, Pooh against others, Pooh against society, Pooh against nature. Each one of the Winnie the Pooh stories explores one of those plots.
As we’re talking about structure, I want to give two structures that you can get started with if you’re wanting to try your hand at children’s books:
- The three-act structure or three repetition structure: This is quintessential western storytelling. You see it in Grimm’s fairy tales. There are three little pigs, three bears. Children love that repetition where you’re giving the same phrase and then doing it again and doing it a third time.
- The chiastic structure: This is an eastern storytelling technique, more common in the Bible. This is where you tell the story and then you flip it and tell the story again, but something has changed. A quintessential example is “Goodnight Moon.” It’s framing the room and then saying goodnight to everything in the room.
I encourage you to pick one or the other. There are other structures you can use, but these two are the easiest to work into children’s books because they’re so simple.
What do children look for in books?
Thomas: What do you see that children look for in a children’s book? What makes a child pick a book off the shelf at the library over another book?
Jennifer: With picture books, it’s such a marriage between the text and the illustrations. A young child like your daughter would be drawn to appealing illustrations or whatever her favorite thing is. If she loves cats over dogs, she’ll be looking for things that she really loves.
When I’ve spoken and read at preschools, almost always there’ll be a little boy or two who will say, “Have you ever written a book about trains?” Kids have their favorite things, and they’re always on the lookout for that.
In the “Maybe” books, I did ask the illustrator to include a lot of pictures of dogs because of my experience reading to little kids at their preschools. They’re always looking for pets, especially dogs, and that’s fun for them. One of the secret cookies that my illustrator and I have in those books is that there are many dogs. As I’m reading to little kids, I’ll say, “Oh, look. There’s another dog.” There’s always some child that’s counting the dogs.
So illustrations are definitely something that young children look for.
Thomas: My daughter would love those books. If any of you have a book that features a purple owl, that is a “shut up and take my money” situation. Purple is her favorite color, and owls are her favorite animal.
Jennifer: Exactly. And I bet you’ll come across something like that. Unicorns are really big right now as well. Those things from a young kid’s perspective are really appealing.
As with any literature, well-told stories bring kids back. My kids really loved this book by William Joyce called “The Leaf Man.” It’s about an old woman who has dropped a little figurine from her wedding cake in the grass, and there are these little creatures, the leaf men, that are trying to return it to her. It’s this really quiet, mysterious book that reflects on grief because she’s grieving the death of her husband.
There are so many layers to this book, most of which my children didn’t understand at all. But the mastery of the storytelling and the illustrations are really appealing.
I tell my clients that young children are more nuanced and more complex in their experience of life than we give them credit for. A two-year-old can have real loss and real grief. They can lose a pet, have a disappointment, or have a friend be unkind to them. Those heartbreaks and disappointments are just as real emotionally as ours are.
I think another thing that’s great in a children’s book is when we can acknowledge and give them ways to express those complex emotions. I had a client recently who had written a story about grief, and the whole book was so buoyant, with the mother being jolly and fine instead of acknowledging that kids experience heavy emotions. Books that are emotionally authentic and that resonate with kids are also ones that they return to.
Thomas: Just because children can’t express their emotions doesn’t mean they’re not experiencing those complex emotions.
What do parents look for in a book?
Thomas: Ultimately, we have to win the parents first. If the parents won’t buy our books, it doesn’t matter how much the kids will like it.
Jennifer: I think it’s important to think about that because when I’m writing a picture book for three to six-year-old children, the three-year-old isn’t reading it independently.
From my own experience, I was looking for books that took them seriously, took their emotional lives seriously, and taught them something. I always liked it if there was a little educational element thrown in.
I’ve got a series of board books coming out over the next couple of years about nature topics. One is about birds, and I did a lot of research so when a bird’s call is described in the book, it’s really accurate. I liked things where I could learn something myself but also be able to say to my child while walking down the block, “Oh, look. There’s a cardinal. Remember we saw a cardinal in that book?”
As parents of really young children, it’s natural to want to always be teaching them and showing them the wonders of this world. So I liked when there was even just some small element that I could invite my children to think about or notice.
I know parents are also looking to replace screen time. Another thing that I think about as a children’s writer is the interactive element. Sometimes it’s appropriate in a story to say, “Count with me” or “Put your finger on the chicken” to give the kid a very tactile way to interact with the book. Parents are looking for analog experiences that can get their kids touching things.
Thomas: Hyperfocus in children’s books is key. Pat the Bunny is designed for a child’s first encounter with a book, teaching them how to turn pages and grasp the basics of reading. It’s like Candy Land for books because it’s simple, fundamental, and surprisingly effective. I initially thought it was the dumbest book ever, but both my kids were captivated. My daughter even learned to say “goodbye” by waving at the end, mimicking the book’s characters.
As a parent, I buy books for specific purposes, not broad appeal. Recently, I purchased The ABCs of Christmas to teach my daughter about Christmas while reinforcing her ABCs. We wanted to control the narrative around the holiday, avoiding myths like Santa Claus that we’d later have to debunk. I was also tired of Dr. Seuss’s ABC and needed a fresh alternative. We also got a Winnie the Pooh Christmas book to round out our collection. Earlier, we bought potty training books because, yes, the world needs more of those. They address a real, specific need.
I’m now considering A Little Blue Bottle to help my daughter navigate a recent family loss. This reflects how parents often seek books tailored to their child’s immediate needs. Authors should take note: focus on a specific child’s life and interests. For example, if a girl loves unicorns or a boy is obsessed with trains, weave those into the story or illustrations. Generic books—like yet another cat-themed one—get lost in the crowd. But a unique focus, like a book about purple owls, can stand out and even spark a trend.
What mistakes do authors make when they get into writing children’s books?
Forced Rhyming
Jennifer: People who are not gifted in rhythm and rhyme can make a lot of mistakes when they try to tell their story that way. I’ve seen so many stories where authors force rhymes that don’t fit naturally.
When writing picture books, avoid using rhythm and rhyme unless you’re highly skilled. Inexperienced writers often disrupt their story’s flow with incorrect meter or forced rhymes. For example, I read a story about two kids on a picnic in a city park, complete with a lake, picnic basket, and gingham blanket. It was charming until the next page inexplicably introduced an elephant, as if they were on safari, just to fit a rhyme. This broke the narrative. I advise against using rhyme unless you’re confident, and I follow this in my own work, avoiding overly structured writing.
Thomas: My daughter loves rhyme books. She also loves books that don’t rhyme. They don’t have to rhyme. You just have to have some kind of structure. And rhyming is a structure, but it’s not the only structure.
“On rhyming, “”Forcing the rhyme” is a common issue. Forcing the rhyme is when a writer crafts a sentence, then adds a rhyming one by choosing an awkward or overly complex word to make the rhyme work, rather than ensuring both lines flow naturally. This can confuse young readers since the word feels out of place and unpredictable. For example, a simple sentence might be paired with a rhyme using a jarring, unfamiliar word, breaking the story’s rhythm.
How would you define “forcing the rhyme”?
Jennifer: I read a funny short article by a children’s author named Josh Funk. He has a list on his website called Rhyme Crimes. One of them he calls “The Yoda Syndrome” where you switch the word order unnaturally to make something rhyme.
Any way where you’re bringing in an image or a word or squeezing in extra syllables is probably a good indicator that maybe the story doesn’t need to be told in rhyme. It really is an art form.
Book Length
Another common mistake is misunderstanding picture book length. Most editors expect 500–700 words, but many submissions are closer to early readers or chapter books. When I explain this, writers often insist their 3,000-word story is a picture book. While exceptions exist, new writers should follow industry standards. Picture books have specific expectations: children and parents anticipate a short, engaging read, not a 4,000-word bedtime story. Understanding these basics is crucial. Just as specific poetic forms have rules, picture books have constraints. Embracing these can provide freedom to tell your story effectively, respecting both the children and adults reading it.
Thomas: The length of a picture book is critical due to how books are printed. Traditionally published books use “signatures,” which are large sheets of paper that are printed, folded, and cut into pages. A single signature typically yields 32 pages, and that’s the standard for most children’s books. If a book is 30 pages, the extra two pages may be left blank, which explains blank pages at the end of some books. However, extending a book to 33 pages requires a second signature, resulting in a book that’s 64 pages. That doubles printing costs and is far too long for a children’s book.
Longer manuscripts often lead to more words per page and disrupt the balance of text and illustrations. This slows the page-turning pace, which can lose a child’s attention. For example, my son needs a page turned every 20 seconds, or he disengages, while my daughter, who loves books, can sit longer.
Most children have short attention spans, and a lengthy book risks alienating your audience. Short books with just one or two words per page are highly engaging. My daughter will demand to reread them repeatedly. As a parent, I also prefer shorter books at bedtime to wrap up quickly.
As a former literary agent, I saw countless picture book pitches that were too long. Writers often tried to cram every lesson they wanted to teach into one book, aiming for 1,000 words when 500–700 is the norm. Instead of planning a career with each book focusing on a single theme, they overloaded one manuscript, thinking 997 words was close enough. It’s not.
Jennifer: An underlying message that I always want to give to my clients and keep in mind myself is that we should take our work for children just as seriously as we take any other work. We should give it time, let it sit, hire editors, and workshop things. Since it’s only 200 or 400 words, it should be taken even more seriously because each word matters so much.
I feel that way when I’m working on a book for children. It just has to be right. I can go to people in my writer’s guild or to my editor and say, “I’m really struggling with this part” or “help me out.” It’s great to have people who will give you feedback and can have some distance from the project.
Thomas: You’re exactly right that this is worth getting right because children’s books, when done well, can last for generations. One of the big things parents look for when buying children’s books are the books their parents read to them. There is a book that I read to my daughter that generations have read, and there’s a chance she’ll read it to her kids. That’s an incredible impact that you can have with your writing, but only if you’re willing to put in the work to really make it a masterpiece.
Where to Find Jennifer Grant
- @JennifercGrant (Twitter)
- Jennifer on Instagram (Instagram)
- A Little Blue Bottle (Affiliate Link)
- JenniferGrant.com (Website)
- Rhyme Crimes
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