It might surprise even those who have known me for a long time that in addition to writing tough-mined adult stories and novels I also enjoy writing children’s stories.
By that I mean not just Middle Grade and Juvenile and Young Adult books and stories (and I en joy writing those kinds of things as well) but all the way down to picture books and early picture books. My mother taught me to read very early on, about 5 or 6 (early for those days), and even as a baby she read me far more advanced and complex works that other kids hadn’t heard of at the time, like Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Aesop’s Fables, and parts of the Arthurian Cycle. I never forgot how those early stories she read me had a profound effect upon my own thinking and outlook, even as a small kid, but only later did I come to understand how it had deeply affected my mental and neurological development.
I simply never developed (or desired to) the modern claptrap idea of “stages of learning” and “age appropriate vocabulary development” and all of that other modern educational bullshit far too many currently try to mindlessly foist upon our children.
Even in the very simplest things I write I have far more confidence and faith in the mind, the active imagination of the child (and even of the baby in the womb), and the ability to understand of the child than I do in any of this self-limiting theoretical crap that passes for modern educational “expertise.” That being said, here is a very simple children’s picture book I wrote this morning. It is meant to be read to newborns and children up to about the age of four or five. The story is unfinished as yet and when I do finish it I will seek a publisher.
MOMMY PILLOW AND THE SUGAR BISCUITS
Sarah had a pillow
Her favorite pillow too
Her mommy made it for her
Upon an ancient loom
She wove it out of sunshine
Moonbeams and small stars
Every time she slept on it
Her dreams would wander far
Many were the evenings
Her pillow seemed to dance
Every morning when she woke
The world just seemed entranced
Sarah’s favorite sleeping snack
Were sugar biscuits gold
Although she liked the silver ones
Glazed with honey bold
The blue ones topped with cinnamon
Made her often laugh
The green ones striped with fairy dust
She saved to eat for last
The brown ones sprinkled ginger
If she shook them as she ate
The golden sugar biscuits
Shone like jewels upon her plate
When Sarah with her pillow
Would go to sleep at night
Her tummy full of biscuits
Cooked in love and light…
Wyrdwend 