Okay, all you writers and drawers of children’s books … I’ve got a big challenge for us all in 2026, because in these trying times, we’ve really got to up our game. Our future is at stake!
As much as we love our craft and the books we produce, we’ve got some fierce competition from technology. Our quiet little picture books can’t hold a candle to the lights, bells and whistles of a phone or an iPad.
I know from personal experience, because I bought a terrific book seven months ago that is still collecting dust on a shelf, because I’ve been watching movies on YouTube in the evenings with the cat. Most of my empty excuses involve the cat, but, truly, it’s time to get away from the TV, because I can feel my brain slowly dissolving into mush.
And that’s what’s happening to our kids and young people. So our writing and drawing has to be as professional and interesting as we can make them.
Books for the smaller ones need to be colorful and engaging as possible. Don’t just draw cute images, make those pictures tell a story.
For beginning readers, give them storylines that pull them in and characters they can relate to … characters and storylines that evoke emotional responses from a reader.
Do the same for older readers, but as readers age, storylines and characters can get more complex and involved.
Don’t preach, instruct or over explain …. allow the reader space to draw their own conclusions and opinions. Give them something to ponder over.
The allure of technology is that the tech does all the work for the mostly passive participant/viewer. Reading involves more effort.
More work or less work … it’s easy to see why tech wins.
But all it takes is one terrific story to pull someone in and transform them into a lifelong reader. Readers learn how to think and thinking people make for better societies and better living for us all.
That’s why all that writing and drawing you’re doing everyday is so important.
You might not think you’re having much of an impact on the world. Maybe no one is noticing or giving you any acknowledgement for all that creative effort … show up anyway.
Some story you write may turn someone into a lifelong reader, thinker, learner, who just may end up doing or being something important that will affect all of us!
We need to be about our work, because we may be running out of time …
Comedian Lachlan Patterson says that in fifty years we’re going to have terrible old people.
Today, he says, when a child climbs up into grandma’s lap, she’ll pull out the family photo album and say, “Here is a picture of your great grandfather standing beside Charles Lindbergh before he flew across the Atlantic … the first ever trans-Atlantic flight in history!”
But in fifty years, a child will be scrolling through his grandma’s photos, and she’ll exclaim, “Here is a picture of my breakfast! What a breakfast! And here are some shoes I once thought about buying! And here is the wing of a plane! And here is the weather forecast! And here is a picture of your great grandmother, staring at herself in the bathroom mirror! And here are twelve more of that exact same photo!”
Get busy writing and publishing some good books, folks, because it’ll only take a generation or two to pass the point of no return …
Also to keep our brains fresh my wife and I play one game of Scrabble daily, P.S.(she usually wins)