How To Write Successful Kids’ Books

Two main factors drive the success of a children’s book:

• does it appeal to the parents … and then the kids?
• does it bring home enough of a life lesson?

Commercially successful ones have a preponderance of wonder and fun that sometimes grossly overshadow any lessons. There is always the central conflict that resolves as good vs evil and then usually ends in the favor of the protagonist. However, most often than not there is either no thematic life lesson or it is overshadowed by fantasy. Is that all we want of fiction for our kids? What about awareness of reality and of other cultures? What about social and emotional lessons? What is an appropriate mix of fun that actually allows a lesson to land?

There are many artifices used in story telling and literature to garner interest. They include everything from adroitly depicted realism, to foreshadowing a future to be, to abject fantasy. These are used in both kids’ and adult books but kids books seem to veer alarmingly towards abject fantasy with the excuse that this gives kids a sense of wonder and imagination. There probably is justification for it but when commercial considerations fueled by parents reliving childhood and vying to be indulgent drive a monopoly of fun and no life lesson, we have a problem.