Archive for April 2025

Recall a game from your childhood that taught you something essential about life. Was it hide-and-seek teaching patience? Tag teaching resilience? Or making up rules to an invented game, teaching negotiation?
Identify one life skill that children develop through play. Now imagine a picture book character who struggles with this skill. Create a game—real or fantastical—that helps your character grow in exactly the way they need.

It’s easy to forget that books are magic, and we who help make them are contributing to children’s access to that magic. Can I suggest that you sit down right now and allow the magic to flow through your fingers. Remember that magic can sometimes be messy. You can edit your work later. For now, feel the magic as you just sit and write. Write about what, you might ask. Whatever you wish. And if nothing comes to you, look around your room and pick an object. Animate it. Write about it.

You know that Peter is going to get into mischief. He can’t help himself.
What does “mischief” look like from an adult’s point of view? What does it look like from a child’s point of view? Write about a child who gets into—and then gets out of mischief.

In Van Allsburg’s worlds, the impossible often intrudes upon the everyday—a board game summons jungle creatures, a magical train appears on a snowy night.
Choose a thoroughly ordinary setting from your daily routine: a bus stop, breakfast table, or waiting room. Now imagine the fabric between worlds has momentarily thinned. What impossible thing breaks through? What magic intrudes? Who notices, and who remains oblivious? Create a rough draft of a picture book in which something truly extraordinary disrupts an ordinary moment.

You know that Peter is going to get into mischief. He can’t help himself.
What does “mischief” look like from an adult’s point of view? What does it look like from a child’s point of view? Write about a child who gets into—and then gets out of mischief.