Thanking the Academy, part 2

With all the work on storyline, character development, drawing, re-drawing, and re-writing I had done to this point, you might be shocked to learn that I hadn’t actually SHOWN the book TO a kid.
The truth is I was afraid. Afraid that a kid, in the way that kids are very straightforward, would straightforwardly tell me that my book was crap. When I finally broke down and showed it to my friend Grace’s kid, Daniel, I had visions of him throwing it to the ground, stomping furiously upon it and declaring it rubbish. Which is sometimes what I felt I wanted to do to it.
Minutes of agony went by as he paged through the book, lips moving, eyebrows going up, then back down…
Daniel was thinking two thumbs UP. A huge first hurdle to cross, for testing your book out on its target audience is rather key to knowing if your book would be interesting to a kid. Admittedly, Daniel was a little older than my target age group (he was nine), so I wasn’t yet out of the woods. In my giddiness, I asked if there was anything he’d like to see changed? Though this question took him off guard, he was ready with suggestions. So, here are Daniel’s direct contributions to the book!