Top Tips for Authors: Giving Children a Voice

 Picture books can change the world because they are about children's minds, feelings and souls. Their voices are echoed in the pages of a picture book and it is how children learn to make and communicate meaning in their world. It is also how parents, caregivers and teachers can influence a child's development and encourage life long learning.  However, the value of picture books is often misunderstood or even undervalued.

Picture books involve expressive and symbolic modes of thinking, understanding and knowing and communicate ideas in a unique, age appropriate manner. Picture books can be described as a 'language' that children understand. In a world where children are bombarded with commodities than cross TV, toys, fast food packaging, video games, clothes, internet and social media, picture books are a safe space where they can pick and choose what they want to be exposed to. In picture books, they are looking for their own voice.

Diverse picture books teach children to be a thinker, a theorist, question ideas and foster curiosity. The modern child already knows a lot of things by the time they come to formal education and are competent individuals. Picture books share new ideas in a meaningful and effective way where they learn through active engagement.

Teachers can use picture books in the classroom as a way of better understanding the processes and procedures chose for learning, allowing them to build on the curriculum by allowing the children themselves to show what they know and what interests them through their individual choice of picture books.

Publishers are embracing the need for picture books in the classroom, and with the growing swell of diversity in emerging writers, children are being exposed to some amazing new voices, some that for the first time will make children feel heard. It's a very exciting time to be a picture book author.

Talk soon,
Michelle

www.michelleworthington.comwww.michelleworthington.com