Writing Children's Books For Dummies. Peter Economy

Children don’t get to choose their families, and things don’t always go well in that sphere, even if only temporarily. But children don’t have the same concept of time that adults do, and so issues with family can feel pressing and overwhelming. Books provide an excellent way to help children deal with such issues as different family makeup (blended families, gay families, families in which someone other than the parents actually do the parenting, and so on), divorce, siblings, favoritism, adoption, rivalries, extended family, and more).

You can find all kinds of picture books about the many faces of contemporary families, as well as middle-grade and YA books. The Family Book, by Todd Parr (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers), which is also in board book form, celebrates the love we feel for our families and all the different varieties they come in; and Families, Families, Families!, by Suzanne Lang (Random House Books for Young Readers), demonstrates all kinds of nontraditional families depicted by animals. If you look, you can find many titles out there on every specific issue that children might have with their families. Figure 3-21 includes Babies Come from Airports, by Erin Dealey, illustrations by Luciana Navarro Powell (EDC Publishing), which is about adoption.

      a) Babies Come from Airports North American rights reprinted with permission of the publisher Kane Miller, A Division of EDC Publishing, 2017. Text copyright © Erin Dealey 2017, illustrations copyright © 2017 Luciana Navarro Powell. b) How to Live on the Edge, written by Sarah Lynn Scheerger. Text © 2010 by Sarah Lynn Scheerger. Reprinted with the permission of CarolRhoda Lab, an imprint oif Lerner Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this cover may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

      FIGURE 3-21: Example titles addressing family issues.

      Middle-grade readers also have their pick of books about families. All About Adoption: How Families Are Made & How Children Feel About It, by Marc Nemiroff and Jane Annunziata (American Psychological Association), covers adoption in an easy-to-relate-to manner. You can find so many books for middle-grade and YA that cover families that we couldn’t touch the tip of the iceberg. Ask your librarian or local bookseller for their favorites, and they can lead the way. Figure 3-21 also shows a good YA example in the genre, How to Live on the Edge, which deals with a teen whose family has the gene for breast cancer.

      Pets and animals

A lot of kids have a lot of love for pets and animals. Children love to read about experiences with animals, from the fascination of a child at the zoo for the first time to getting a pet. You can write a board book, a picture book, even novels about pets and animals. You can already see many of these titles on the shelves, with more coming out every season. You can write them from the animal’s point of view (like in Memoirs of a Tortoise, in Figure 3-22) or from an animal lover’s point of view.

      From Memoirs of a Tortoise published by Sleeping Bear Press. Reprinted with permission of the illustrator. © 2020 Tim Bowers.

FIGURE 3-22: Memoirs of a Tortoise.

      Cultural issues

      

Cultural issues are generally those in which what a child experiences as a part of their culture clashes with the way that the world around them portrays that culture. Like the #ownvoices phenomenon described in the section “Diversity,” earlier in this chapter, books about different cultures and writers from nonmainstream cultures can really expand children’s understanding of the world and make them feel that they belong.

Some outstanding picture book entries in this genre include M Is for Melanin, by Tiffany Rose (Little Bee Books), an ABC book that also comes as a board book, celebrating and providing Black-positive messages. Figure 3-23 features They’re So Flamboyant, a picture book about acceptance and stereotyping.

      Middle-grade titles worth exploring include Tight, by Torrey Maldonado (Puffin Books), about a kid in the projects whose mom supports his laid-back nature, while his dad wants him to toughen up to his surroundings. Marcus Vega Doesn’t Speak Spanish, by Pablo Cartaya (Puffin Books), is about a Latino boy and the estranged father whom he confronts in a trip to Puerto Rico.

Young adult books about cultural differences are, understandably for the age group, much more complicated than titles for younger children. Although many middle-grade books are a celebration of cultural differences, YA books in this genre confront more difficult issues. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by bestselling author Sherman Alexie (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers), is about a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. American Street, by Ibi Zobol (Balzer + Bray), a National Book Award finalist, draws on the author’s experiences as a young Haitian immigrant. With the Fire on High, by Elizabeth Acevedo (Quill Tree Books), covers the experiences of a young Latina teenage mother.

      From They’re So Flamboyant. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Magination Press/American Psychological Association/Harry N. Abrams. Text © 2021 Michael Genhart. Illustrations © 2021 Tony Neal.

      FIGURE 3-23: A picture book about acceptance and stereotyping.

      Addiction, abuse, and mental illness

      

Because addiction, abuse, and mental illness of all kinds are serious and scary, you find them mostly covered in YA fiction books. Authors of YA novels write about these issues in adults whose lives impact those of children, or they write about children themselves who are battling these issues. Many titles are written in the style of confessional memoirs told from the point of view of the young person.

This genre also benefits from the #ownvoices movement (discussed in the section “Diversity,” earlier in this chapter). Publishers seek out writers who have their own experiences and who can translate those experiences into fiction for young adults (see the books in Figure 3-24).

      YA books about addiction that you might want to check out include Crank, by poet Ellen Hopkins (Margaret K. McElderry), about a perfect, gifted high school student who gets addicted to crank (methamphetamines). Summer of ’69, by Todd Strasser (Candlewick), drawing on the author’s own experiences, talks about a young man who exists in the tuning in, turning on, and dropping out milieu of the 1960s U.S. who may be drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. The classic Go Ask Alice, by Beatrice Sparks (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers), probably one of the very first YA novels about addiction, follows a teen girl’s harrowing descent into drug addiction.

      a) From Pork Belly Tacos with a Side of Anxiety. Reprinted by permission of Santa Monica Press © 2022. b) From List of Ten. Text © 2021 Halli Gomez; cover illustration