There's nobody better than Lauren Child to tell us what works in writing for children. Her "Charlie and Lola" series of illustrated books has world-wide sales of over 5 million, as well as a TV spin off series that's also popular internationally. Kids love her books and adults find her quirky humor appealing as well.
Yet it was the publishing industry that has given her the hardest time, she told Carla Power in Time magazine:
"Any resistance I met with came from the industry. I was told, 'You'll never get a book published in the first person' and 'Children don't like to have words and pictures integrated.' It was absolute rubbish."
Time describes her illustrations this way: "She mixes naif drawings with collage, incorporating everything from fabric scraps to Polaroid photos. New fonts pop up for a sentence, only to change again for the next; the text can skip across the page as exuberantly as Lola does."
If you're interested in writing for kids, her books are worth studying--not to copy her style, but to see how effective it is to develop your own.
(For tips on all kinds of writing, see my book, "Your WRiting Coach." And if you're not getting the support or managing to make time for your writing, you would benefit from my Writing Breakthrough Program. You can get full details, plus my free report on "Seven Things that Are Stopping You from Writing and How to Overcome Them, by clicking here.)
