GUEST APPEARANCE · MAY 5, 2021 · THE KARA GOLDIN SHOW
How I Write for Kids Without Talking Down to Them
Kara Goldin and I talked about the book I began for my little brother, what live school audiences taught me about children, why entrepreneurship belongs in kids’ stories, and how those lessons grew into Dinosaur House.
LISTEN TO THE ORIGINAL INTERVIEW
Timmy Bauer: Founder of Dinosaur House, Podcast Host, and Author of Billy the DragonOpen Kara Goldin’s episode page ↗The best way I know to respect a young reader is to take their world seriously without shrinking the ideas I want to share.
When Kara invited me onto her show, we began with Billy the Dragon and ended up exploring a much larger question: how do you give children stories that feel like they were truly made for them while also helping them imagine lives, skills, and possibilities they may not have encountered yet?
The conversation captured my work at a particular moment in 2021. I had moved from making books of my own to helping founders and industry leaders create books, too. The business was evolving, but the standard underneath it had not changed: children deserve stories that entertain them, challenge them, and trust their intelligence.
What Kara and I explored
- how making a book for my four-year-old brother gave my creative work a real audience;
- why I watch children’s reactions instead of relying only on adult opinions;
- how to enter a child’s world without talking down to them;
- why parents and children make different decisions about the same book;
- how entrepreneurship stories can expand a child’s sense of agency;
- why I use podcasts to build relationships before I use them as content channels; and
- how Dinosaur House grew from those creative and relational principles.
The Book Began With My Little Brother
I had been drawing cartoons since I was ten, mostly making comic strips and trying to make my friends laugh. The work became more serious when I was seventeen and my little brother, Tristan, was four. The age gap gave me a reason to make something specifically for him, and that project became Billy the Dragon.
That origin matters because I did not begin with a market category or a lesson I wanted to package. I began with a person. I knew the child I wanted to delight. His responses gave me a much more honest creative brief than the abstract idea of “writing a children’s book.”
Even years later, the funniest evidence that the book connected came from a Halloween when I ran low on candy and put copies of Billy the Dragon outside instead. They disappeared. For a children’s author, having a kid—or even a parent—walk away with the book feels like a very specific kind of compliment.
Enter a Child’s World—Then Invite Them Into Yours
During the interview, I said that seven-, eight-, and nine-year-olds do not want to be talked down to. They want an adult to enter their world. That does not mean every idea must remain simple or familiar. It means the story has to begin with respect for what already feels funny, exciting, scary, or important to them.
My goal is two-directional. I use references, rhythms, problems, and humor that children recognize, then I invite them upward into ideas I care about. A book can be playful and still introduce responsibility, value creation, empathy, philosophy, or the mechanics of a small business. Children do not need an adult idea diluted into a lecture. They need it translated into an experience.
That difference explains why I would rather tell a funny dragon story about consequences than put a title like Taking Responsibility for Your Actions on the cover. The lesson still matters. The invitation has to feel like a story a child would choose.
I Test for Reactions, Not Polite Approval
Performing for children taught me to watch what a story does in the room. Are they laughing? Do they gasp? Do they get nervous for the character? Do they want to answer a question? Does the energy disappear?
Those responses tell me more than asking a child whether the book was “good.” Children are often kind, and adults are even more likely to evaluate the message instead of the experience. I need to know whether the story creates a reaction strong enough to hold attention and make the idea memorable.
That is why I think in terms of reaction triggers. A page, image, reveal, gross moment, joke, or problem should give the child something to feel. The educational value works better when it rides inside a story the reader already wants to continue.
A Children’s Book Has Two Audiences
Kara pushed me on an important tension: the child may be the reader, but the parent is often the buyer. I admitted that my instincts lean heavily toward the child. I would rather use the cover, title, and illustrations to win a young reader than make the book look obviously instructive to an adult.
That instinct protects the story, but it also creates a marketing challenge. A successful children’s book has to communicate enough value to the adult while preserving the child’s desire to choose it. The solution is not to turn the cover into a promise about character development. It is to help the parent recognize what the child will experience and what conversation the experience can open.
The strongest books serve both audiences at once: the child receives a story worth revisiting, and the adult receives a meaningful moment with the child.
Entrepreneurship Gives Kids More Possible Futures
We talked at length about Lucas the Dinosaur Entrepreneur. I did not make that book because every child should start a company. I made it because entrepreneurship gives children a useful way to think about agency: notice a problem, understand another person, make something valuable, test an idea, and learn from what happens.
A child who sees a neighbor struggling to walk a dog can imagine a small service. That story contains empathy, initiative, tradeoffs, pricing, and responsibility without requiring a business-school vocabulary. The child begins to see that the world contains problems they are capable of helping solve.
For me, that is the deeper educational purpose. A good story can enlarge the number of futures a child believes are available.
Why the Physical Picture Book Still Matters
Kara asked how children’s content was changing across print, audio, video, and games. My answer was that children’s books remained unusual because many families still valued the physical experience: a child in someone’s lap, turning pages, looking closely at illustrations, and sharing the pace of the story with an adult.
I was interested in YouTube and animatics, too, because children already spend time in those formats. But I did not see digital distribution as a reason to abandon print. Each medium creates a different relationship. A picture book is not merely information delivered on paper; it is an object two people can experience together.
That shared experience is one reason a children’s book can carry an expert’s idea in a way a conventional business book cannot. It can enter family life.
I Treat Podcasting as a Relationship Machine
At the time of this conversation, I described podcasting as a relationship machine first and a content channel second. I hosted several shows because each one gave me a reason to meet a different group of people I genuinely needed to understand.
I often put more energy into the conversation than the post-production system. Kara’s operation showed me the opposite side: a strong interview can be thoughtfully distributed into many useful pieces of content. I wanted to improve that part, but I did not want to lose the relational center.
The interview itself is the first product. If the guest feels seen, the questions reach something real, and both people leave knowing each other better, the episode has created value before download numbers enter the picture.
How Those Ideas Became Dinosaur House
Dinosaur House grew from the realization that founders and industry leaders often had ideas worth carrying into the next generation, but did not know how to turn those ideas into stories children would actually enjoy.
Our work was not simply to simplify an executive’s expertise. It was to find the human idea inside it, understand the families the person hoped to reach, and design a story that could hold a child’s attention. The client brought the knowledge and point of view. I brought what school performances, illustration, writing, and hundreds of children had taught me about the audience.
Kara and I even played with that process during the interview. In an earlier conversation on my podcast, she had described a children’s book about finding work you love instead of accepting what everyone else expects. I mocked up a possible cover. That small exercise showed the premise of Dinosaur House: an adult’s hard-earned idea can become a concrete story a family can talk about together.
The Question Underneath My Work
Near the middle of our conversation, I told Kara that if I ever wrote a book for adults, the theme might be solving problems with questions. That idea still explains much of my path.
I did not begin with a perfect career plan. I kept asking: What does this child respond to? What makes a school visit work? How can a lesson become a story? Who do I need to learn from? What can a founder give to the next generation? What part of this problem can I actually control?
The questions moved me from cartoons to Billy the Dragon, from school performances to entrepreneurship books, and from my own stories to helping other people create theirs. The useful question is rarely “What am I already qualified to call myself?” It is usually “Who am I trying to serve, and what would make this genuinely valuable to them?”
Read the publisher’s complete transcript49-minute interview · Kara Goldin and Timmy Bauer
The Kara Goldin Show publishes the complete episode transcript on its original page. It includes our full discussion of Billy the Dragon, children’s media, entrepreneurship education, podcasting, and Dinosaur House.
Original Episode and Attribution
This first-person article is based on my appearance on The Kara Goldin Show. Kara Goldin and her team published the original interview, audio, video, show notes, and transcript.