Creating A Children’s Book Page

A simplistic form of expression

For this week’s challenge, I want to open a portal into a different side of creativity, through children’s books. I have always enjoyed writing, usually in the form of poetry or being a storyteller; however over the past few years I have taken an interest in writing and illustrating children’s books. Part of that interest has come from my current career aspirations of working with children in the mental health context. Through that, I have a strong desire to combine my knowledge as a future practitioner and as a fellow creative to help educate children and families through picture books. I also love the idea of not always having to let words inform me of what a story is telling, but rather letting the images and few sentences tell the story. Overall, I love the idea of creating something meaningful in a simplistic form. 

Of course I took some inspiration from my Pinterest board to flesh out my idea for this challenge and also to visualize what this could look like.

 Sources (Image 1, Image 2, Image 3)

Let’s get to it.

For this task you can use a sheet of paper or an electronic device. For this example, I will be using an iPad, however the same steps apply. 

The steps for today are fairly simple, I would suggest focusing on a particular context, setting, or problem that could serve as a prompt for your page.

For my drawings, I focused on a scene in which a boy was looking out the window of his house. For the next page I developed, I focused on a setting, which was a swing set on a playground.  

Note: This book page isn’t limited to a child population, feel free to use any age population that you feel speaks to you. Whether that's problems a particular population faces (i.e., children falling off the playground) or contexts they are typically seen (i.e., playground v. a club). 

Now that you have selected the prompt as a guide, you can now start to write one sentence that describes the particular situation or context that you have selected. When writing this section, we can choose to be literal or we can write it in a way that almost sounds like you are reading a fairly short poem. 

This could be our literal sentence. “John injured himself on the playground.” This would be considered a literal sentence. Straight to the point. Instead, we can be more creative and opt for something like, “ With the thrill of seeking discomfort, John is met with a rush of pain.” If you want to go for a more “poetic” vibe.  

The last and final part of the challenge is to create an image that best describes the prompt and situation that you provided. I have tagged some references from Pinterest for inspiration in different styles when drawing your image. But ultimately I want you to have fun with this! Feel free to use any style that speaks to you (i.e., not adding color, sketching..). 

Here are two examples of how mine came out, feel free to post yours, I’d love to see what you came up with!

Have fun and enjoy your time tapping into something more simplistic.