Join Our Family
My Account
Molly Brave logo
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Store
  • Blog
  • Activities
  • Contact
  • Blog

    • All Categories
    • For Parents and Teachers
    • Recommended Books
    • Resources
    • News
    • Mentorship With Mary Alice – An Introduction
      • How To Begin Writing For Children
    • Independent, Hybrid and Self-Publishing

Tag: preschool

1. For what age group will you write?

Published on June 28, 2017 | In Blog, How To Begin Writing For Children | 0 Comment

“Reader first.”

What will best serve the reader? This is the absolute bottom-line advice of Jerry Jenkins, 21-Time New York Times Bestselling Author of the Left Behind Series. Tape these words to your writing space. Without your reader, your message will not be communicated.  

So obviously, when your reader is your first consideration, you need to know your reader as well as possible. You intend to take your reader on a journey, and your reader must be able to trust you to bring him safely through that journey.

Traditional age categories for children's literature are: Infant and Toddler, Preschool, Beginning Reader, Primary Grade, Middle Grade, Young Adult. Now Young Adult is divided into Tween, Teen, and Young Adult (high school).  In the same way, publishing is beginning to more precisely delineate developmentally appropriate material for the youngest children.

Perhaps the quickest way to get an overview of the field of children's publishing is to find a copy of the newest edition of Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market published by Writer's Digest Books. You can take a look inside this book and read Amazon reviews here. Most larger public libraries should have a copy.

Probably the quickest way to look at a quantity of the best children's books, new and classic, is to visit the children's room of the largest public library in your area. Introduce yourself to the Children's Librarian if you can, the one with the Master's Degree in Library and Information Science. Not everyone who works in a library is a librarian with a graduate level of education and expertise. Ask her to point you in the direction of how to start becoming familiar with the collection. Find out how many books you can check out at one time, and for how long. And stay awhile, looking at the books and observing the children and adults who come into the children's library.

With what age are you most familiar? With what age do you most enjoy spending time? With what age do you most empathize, i.e. identify with, sympathize with, understand, share the feelings of, feel in tune with?

Consider the adults who may be reading to or with the children in your age group.  They, too, are part of your audience, and a very important part.  When writing for very young children, you are also writing for parents, grandparents, child care providers, babysitters - including older brothers and sisters, relatives and friends - teachers and children's librarians.  Hopefully the people who purchase your book will include the child in making the choice, though often that is not possible. 

One of the most satisfying acts of giving is to select "the right book for the right child at the right time." This is why there is a reader for just the book you want to right. I recently read, "Write the book you needed to read as a child." I don't know the author of this sentence, so I just now googled it and got about 539,000,000 results. I suggest you do the same, and read some of the wonderful advice available online about writing a quality children's book.

I would love to hear from you about your writing journey; feel free to comment and share your ideas.

 

Leave A Message

The Preschool Podcast: For Leaders in Early Childhood Education

Published on April 25, 2017 | In Blog, For Parents and Teachers | 0 Comment

The Preschool Podcast, brought to you by HiMama, is a platform for learning from leading professionals in early childhood education. If you work in a childcare, preschool or early years setting, The Preschool Podcast will provide you with inspiring and motivational stories, as well as practical advice for managing your organization, center or classroom. The goal of the The Preschool Podcast is to provide inspiration and knowledge to the future leaders of early childhood education by speaking with experienced and insightful leaders in the world of preschool and early learning today.

Recent Episodes

Episode #41 - Impactful advocacy for child care| April 25, 2017
On episode 41 of the show we talk about impactful advocacy with Michelle McCready, Chief of Policy at Child Care Aware of America (CCAoA). Michelle provides vision, leadership, and management to the policy and evaluation division at CACoA. In our conversation we talk about the history of childcare in America; the influence of child care on the American economy; the present state of childcare under the Trump administration; and the importance of advocacy from childcare practitioners to provide vital insight for policy change. Michelle emphasizes that it is crucial for educators to speak up and become the voice for better outcomes for children.
Episode Length: 19:53 minutes

Leave A Message

© 2025 Molly Brave, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

  • Store
  • Blog
  • Privacy Policy
  • Disclaimer
  • Terms of Use
  • Contact