BellaOnline Forums Career Writing for Children Writing a Great Children's Book

Hello Fellow Children's Writers!

It's the time of year when I evaluate children's books for the Mom's Choice Award. I've started to look at the pile of books I was sent and it's made me think about the qualities of great children's books.

A new article was the result:

Writing a Great Children's Book

I hope you enjoy it and I hope you'll share stories about your favorite children's books and which characteristics on the checklist they match.

Happy Writing!
Annamaria

Great post!

I look forward to reading this.

I happen to be writing a children's book right now. So any insights from the article will be helpful.

My book is called "Chevalier: The Queen's Mouseketeer". It's a cross between a classic fairy tale storybook and a modern day graphic novel. If I had to describe it I'd say it's like "The Princess Bride meets The Lord of the Rings in a Disney/Pixar movie written in Dr. Seuss rhyme starring a mouse". My partner artist Tiffany Ross and I are showing it as a webcomic while we're finishing it to help build an audience for the book.

If you're interested you can read the webcomic here:

Chevalier

**NOTE: new users are not allowed to add links/urls!

We just started showing it. Let me know what you think.

Dee

Hello Dee

I took a quick look. I like the idea of a graphic novel (webcomic) children's book although I think it might be more appropriate for a slightly older child than the 5-8 year old market. You should change the "it's" on your pages to "its." Just an editorial pet peeve of mine since you are not using the contraction for "it is" here.

You might want to get your book up on MagicBlox.com. I think this is a great forum to get feedback from children and their parents and potential sales as well.

Thanks. :) Our target audience with Chevalier is 6 to 12. My partner Tiffany has a 7 year old daughter named Kim and she's loving it so far. So I'm hopeful that other kids her age (and older) will enjoy it too. :) I'll check out Magicblox as well. Dee