How to Write a Children’s Book That Kids Actually Want to Read

Introduction

00:13Kent Sanders: Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Writer. Each weekday, we bring you a short lesson that helps you live out the four practices of a great writer. Creativity, consistency, courage, and connection. Here on the weekend edition, we take a deeper dive into those topics through conversations with writers, as well as teaching that helps us supply what we're learning. For more, you can visit us at dailywriterlife.com. One of the common themes that I hear from writers is that almost everybody wants to write a kid's book. And why wouldn't they? We all remember the books that impacted us as kids, and we want to try and recreate some of that magic for kids that are in our lives today. But also, if you're a parent or a grandparent, you've probably spent some time reading those short picture books to the little ones, and you think, wow, I would love to see more great kids' books in the world. Well, my guest today is here to help us understand the value of writing a kid's book as well as how to structure the story if you do eventually want to create one. Timmy Bauer is the founder of Dinosaur House, which is a company that turns industry leaders into kids' book authors. He's also the author of several children's books himself, including Billy the Dragon and Lucas the Dinosaur Entrepreneur. I love that title. In addition, Timmy is the host of the Purpose-Driven Entrepreneur Podcast. And in today's conversation, you'll learn how to stand out in your industry by writing a kid's book. You'll learn about Timmy's process for developing a children's book story and a lot more. This was a really fun and fascinating conversation. And, you know, we've got something like 400 episodes of The Daily Writer. I mean, this podcast stretches back several years. And I'm kind of surprised that I honestly don't think I've ever had a guest on who was who could really talk about how to write a kid's book. So I was really fascinated by this topic. And my good buddy Andy Storch introduced me to Timmy. So here we are. I'm so glad we had this conversation, and it was an absolute blast. So here's my conversation with the amazing Timmy Bauer. Timmy, it's so good to have you on the Daily Writer Podcast. We've been planning this for a while, and I'm glad we could finally make this work so you so we can talk about kids' books. So, first of all, welcome to the podcast. That's first and foremost, most important thing.

Why a children’s book can make you stand out

02:23Timmy Bauer: Kent, thank you so much for having me. I love the concept of your show and I think this is awesome.

02:28Kent Sanders: So you run a company called Dinosaur House, which by the way is a really cool name for a company. I wish my company had that cool of a name. Might just not as fun. Inkwell Ghostwriting doesn't inspire the same level of fun as Dinosaur House. So maybe I'll have to change my company name.

02:44Timmy Bauer: Well, see, there's a lot of um, there's a lot of talk about like what is the right way to name a company. And um, I think there's a lot of value in just naming something what it is, which is not what I did. Uh, but that's what you did.

02:57Kent Sanders: But but you have a name that I think goes along with what you do, which is which is fun, which is lighthearted. It's it's something that is playful. So I think you did very well with that. So thank you. Thank you.

03:08Timmy Bauer: I'm just a huge fan of dinosaurs, honestly.

03:11Kent Sanders: Yeah, I mean, what’s not to love about dinosaurs?

03:14Timmy Bauer: We we actually um I I push a lot of our customers to think outside the box of like a lot of our customers want to make the characters in their books uh humans, and I try to push them to think like, okay, for a kid, like it's not that human characters are uninteresting, but um, what kids are often drawn to in a book is any level of magic, fantasy, or like outside the bounds of reality. And one of the easiest ways that you can like one of the most accessible ways of doing that is to just make your characters non-humans, like make them anthropomorphized rocks, make them aliens, make them dinosaurs, make them monsters, anything like that is gonna add a level of interest. But um, it's been interesting because I've gotten pushback from almost every single customer on this point.

04:01Kent Sanders: But see, it just makes sense to me because if you look at at any kid show, if you look at cartoons or superhero movies or whatever, you know, there's all kinds of weird, fantastical stuff going on with I mean, even going back to like when I was in college, which was a million years ago, Veggie Tales was super popular back then. It's talking vegetables. I mean, yep. It just kind of seems to it just kind of seems to be the thing that you would do in a kid's book. So I'm surprised you would get pushback from that.

04:28Timmy Bauer: Well, I actually had some really intelligent pushback the other day from an entrepreneur named John Meese. Uh, so John Meese, uh, he was talking about um the difference between Daniel Tiger and um Mr. Rogers. And Mr. Rogers uh is like one of the most successful children's programs of all time. Daniel Tiger is a successful children's program, but like kids don't walk away solidifying, at least this was his point. Kids don't walk away solidifying the message of a of an episode as well in Daniel Tiger as they do in Mr. Rogers. And he says he thinks it's because of the human-to-human connection that Mr. Rogers offers through the TV. And I had like a couple of thoughts off of that. One of them, I think Mr. Rogers is uniquely gifted, like he is superhuman, he was superhuman in his ability to connect with kids across the TV. I also think it's interesting that even he had to travel to the land of make-believe in the middle of his episodes in order to add more interest to his shows. Like he goes from his apartment to a fantasy land with a castle and all these like animals and puppets and whatnot. And like there's a very good reason why he did that, and that's because it it's very interesting to a kid. And um, but I think it is interesting to think about the juxtaposition of like you want this fantasy. I know we're like jumping right into the content, by the way. I'm so sorry for like derailing whatever it was you wanted to talk about, but uh uh the idea of like uh a juxtaposing and like a play, like a dancing around of um human-to-human real life interaction with fantasy. And so this is something I've been thinking a lot about with our with the books that we're making is like how do we have both?

06:18Kent Sanders: Man, I love that. I really, really love that. So let's go back a couple steps. Um, let's start out with with the with the question of why write a kid's book in the first place? If you have somebody who is thinking about they want to be an author, they want to put some stuff out there into the world, why do a kid's book as opposed to some other type of book, fiction, you know, young adult fantasy, nonfiction business book. What specifically is it about a kid's book that that adds value to the world in a different way than other types of books?

Writing for children without talking down to them

06:50Timmy Bauer: Yeah. I think there are a ton of answers to that question. And for me, the first answer to the question that I experienced when I was 17 was I had a little brother named Tristan, who was four at the time when I wrote my first uh kids' book. And I wrote Billy the Dragon as just a way to entertain my little brother. And we formed a really strong bond and connection through me making this book for him. So just making a kid's book that you know, because you either have kids or there's kids in your life, uh, that you know is going to be very entertaining to a kid, you have made something that in the hands of any adult that like uses it to entertain their kid, you've made something that is a tool for connecting between an adult and a kid. Like that's and that's hugely important. There's like all this data around the the bond that gets formed when parents regularly read to their kids, and then also just like a bunch of other benefits, like uh six-year-olds who are read to every day are a year more literate than their peers. Like that's that's huge. So that's just an extra bonus, aside from the fact that they're also getting amazing connection time with their parents.

08:02Kent Sanders: Yeah.

08:02Timmy Bauer: Um, so that so that's one reason is like connection. And I would say if you're if you're a dad specifically, because moms already do this really well, but like generally speaking, I think kids don't get enough time with their dads. Um, and this is of course stereotypical. It would be the same as true if we're talking about working moms, like it's hard to get enough time. Um, what's in what's important when you are a working parent, and so it's hard to provide enough quality time with your kids, having something ritualistic that you do with them that is really enjoyable for the kid is is super duper important. The kid's gonna grow up remembering that ritual. And so being read to really entertaining books is one of those rituals that will create the bond. So that's like the probably the biggest reason. Now, like for me at Dinosaur House, our whole thing is like we want to make the kinds of books that working parents, when they read them to their kids, it connects them over what it is that mom or dad does for a living. So like we turn industry leaders into kids' book authors, and the products that are being created are the kinds of things that like if you're a if you're a marketer and a parent, you can read this kid's book to your kid and they're and then have awesome conversations around what is marketing and like what is that job like? And so that's really cool. So so yeah, so that answers that answers more like my personal why, but like if you're just if you're just say, say you are like say you are the type of person that we're trying to serve with the service of Dinosaur House, if you're an industry leader, the biggest reason I think that you would want to have a kid's book is for your industry specifically, is so that you're providing that tool to your audience. So your audience is gonna eat up your kids' book, especially if you make it really well. If you make it super entertaining for the kids of your adult audience, you have made a tool that will become part of the bedtime routine of your audience, which is which is incredible.

10:03Kent Sanders: Ooh, I love that idea. You know, that that's interesting because that ties in really, really nicely with this overall idea of what we're doing with this podcast. The idea of writing every day. When you can help people do something that that they do every day that changes their life, that's really, really powerful. I mean, that's the whole idea of the whole miracle morning thing is you you have this ritual or routine that you do every single morning. That's immensely powerful, powerful. So I love this idea of giving people something that they can do with their kids every night before they go to bed. That's genius. That's really, really genius. I love it.

10:38Timmy Bauer: Yeah, yeah. I mean, for me, one of the most fulfilling things was so I have a customer's name's Dan Sanchez, where we're working with him to produce his book, I want to be a marketer when I grow up. And I asked him, you know, when you talk to your kids about what it is that you do for a living, how do you explain it to them in such a way that they are interested? And he was like, I don't talk to them about what I do for a living because whenever I've tried to, they're not interested. And the and then now he's read the manuscript and and shown the illustrations to his kids and they're they're really excited and they genuinely like it. And so now he is getting to have conversations with his kids that are way more exciting around what it is that he does for a living. And to me, that is like hugely fulfilling.

11:22Kent Sanders: So walk us through the process of how how do you create a story for a kid's book? Let's set aside the whole issue of illustrations for a minute, because that that's an aspect that stresses people out hugely. I know is like, where do I find an illustrator and all those things? But let's say someone comes to you and they have an idea, like I want to do a kid's book on, let's say, well, let's just say I want to do a kid's book on writing. What would be your process for taking that concept and then building out a a story or the text for that kid's book?

11:52Timmy Bauer: Yeah. So if it's if it's genuinely for kids to consume. So the the the process that we follow is I developed it, it's called story design. Um, and then we use a a methodology called reaction triggers. So it's a three-part process. The first thing that you ask is, what are the objectives of this kid's book? So both like strategic objectives, but also just what is my thematic objective? Now you have to be careful because if you follow, if you follow this, you're very likely to make a book that's what's called didactic in the industry. Like that means that it's like designed to teach a lesson. And that's if it the more see-through it is, the more awful it is. But generally speaking, didactic stories are trash. And the publishing industry definitely doesn't like to publish them. So that's one thing that you really want to avoid. So the way that I like to think about it, instead of what's a lesson that I want to teach, is what is something that I would love for kids to be thinking about? So that's the question is what is something that I would love for kids to be thinking about? So as it relates to writing in general, what would I love for kids to be thinking about? Or what would I love for them to be inspired towards? So that's the question. So big question right there. You want to answer that question and figure that out. The next thing is you're gonna make a plot that uh that shows that. So as best as you can, you're gonna try to craft a hero's journey type story, especially if you're writing for the older elementary audience, like uh not older elementary, but but old the older part of the kids that would be consuming picture books. So pre um first grade, uh, you're not necessarily writing a hero's journey type story. Um, I can talk about what that age group really likes, but for um late first grade, second grade, third grade, even fourth grade, even though they're supposed to be reading chapter books, they still have picture books. Um, you can write something that's more like a hero's journey. So, you know, you're gonna craft it. And so instead of thinking like, what's the hero's journey that's gonna teach this lesson? It's just what's a fun hero's journey that uh that a kid would really enjoy that is going to deal with these themes and and talk about these things that I want a kid to be thinking about or be inspired towards. And then the last oh, I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah. Oh, no, the last step in the process is probably the most important step. And it is in order to create an addictive kids book, you need you need um you need a really good story, but you also need for every beat of that story to be told through what I'm calling reaction triggers. Okay. And if you look, if you watch any DreamWorks movie, they do this really well. So, and and Pixar as well. Every beat of the story is told with either comedy or grossness or scariness or something, some something that's designed to get a elicit a big reaction in the kid. So the way I think about it is every page of your book needs to elicit a big reaction in the kid. So you're trying to tell your story. So you've wrote the outline of your story. Now you're trying to tell it as a series of reaction triggers.

How Timmy develops a story

15:04Kent Sanders: Wow. You you basically could put together a whole course on this.

15:08Timmy Bauer: That would be cool.

15:09Kent Sanders: Yeah. I mean, this is really good stuff. So, how did you develop this? Was this just through the process of taking some kids' book that you kids' books that you loved and reverse engineering those?

15:20Timmy Bauer: Um, that's a good question. It wasn't so much through that. I so I I did this on accident with my little brother Tristan. My whole agenda with Billy the Dragon was I wanted every moment of the story to get a reaction out of him. I was every night before bed, I would tell him, like, hey, I wrote a little bit more of Billy the Dragon. And I was either trying to gross him out, scare him, make him laugh, or get some kind of a reaction from him. And that's what created the bond was like, we're both laughing at this joke that I told in the story, or we're both being like, Ew, that's so gross, as like one of the characters, you know, uh gets you know, steps in poop or gets swarmed by spiders or something like that. And and so the so then I thought to myself, well, how can I do this for people that are so bent on creating like I so okay, I wrote a book called Harper Here's No. And the whole challenge was I wanted to, I took 12 weeks and and got like 30 moms on board with the idea of I I I felt like I had figured out at least to some degree how to write for for young kids. But my but there's two people that you're trying to serve with a kid's book. Like the kids are the ones that are responsible for whether or not the book gets read and reread and reread, but the parent is the one responsible for whether or not the book gets purchased. And so I felt like I I I had a good handle on how to please the kid that is going to be responsible for whether it gets reread a bunch, but I did not know how to please the parent. And so I wrote Harper Here's No as a challenge to myself to just try to learn that. So it was 12 weeks. Every week I would go live with what I had made that week, that previous week, and then I would have 30 moms just give me feedback. And uh, we wrote a book about a little girl named Harper who's dealing with the challenge of like mom is telling her no for something and she doesn't understand why. And so I tried to that's where I really formed like married the ideas of like, okay, I'm gonna tell a plot that by itself is interesting and relatable for a kid that is gonna deal with this theme that I know that parents want, and uh is going to every beat of this story is gonna pull a reaction out of a kid. I submitted it to a writing contest, like a publisher's writing contest, and got back. Uh, they they like graded, like literary agents graded it, and they basically said it's too didactic, like this is unpublishable. It ended up being uh my best-selling book. When I I toured through Arkansas in November of 20 uh 19. I get years messed up. Uh, and it was like it was like it outsold Billy the Dragon, which was the book that I was touring with. So, like moms really wanted it. Like parents in general really wanted it.

The business case for children’s books

18:05Kent Sanders: Well, I love the idea that you basically had a group of beta readers that were giving you feedback on this. It wasn't just something that you did and then put it out there, but you got real-time feedback week after week of doing this. That is a really genius concept.

18:19Timmy Bauer: Thank you.

18:20Kent Sanders: I feel like that's a really important point that a lot of writers miss.

18:24Timmy Bauer: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I mean, like beta readers are your lifeblood. Like my whole thing was I didn't want to, I ended up deciding to self-publish most of my books because that gave me a lot of control, and I could just go directly to my audience and share the books with my audience and grow my audience through sharing the books that I'm making with that audience and just keep beating my head against the question of like what makes good kids' books good, and have the audience telling me the answer.

18:56Kent Sanders: Wow, this is good stuff. Well, I know you have to run in just a moment. So, my final question, uh, Timmy is how can people get in touch with you and find out more about what Dinosaur House Publishing does and um just how how they can they can really dive into your work and find out more about it?

19:13Timmy Bauer: If you're listening and you are a writer, we are always looking for talented writers. So, like, I would love to hire talented writers right now. So, like if anything that I said resonated with you and you were like, I want to make kids' books for a living, um, and you want to take a shot at you know listening to somebody talk about what it is they want to inspire kids towards and write a reaction trigger loaded manuscript for that goal, and like like come on board, like we're looking for writers. So um I'll I would teach you the methodology, or our one of our writers here would teach you the methodology. And one of the cool things is we're turning our writers into kids book authors as well. So, like Dinosaur House is is having our writers also be customers of Dinosaur House for free, just as a perk of of being here. So you would have your own kids book as well as as you're learning the the process of of how we do things. So if you're a writer, like just get in touch with me, dinosaurhouse.com, and uh there is a button somewhere that says that says like to apply it to be a writer, but if you can't find it, I'm I'm Timmy Bauer. Bauer is spelled B-A-U-E-R. Just uh DM me anywhere that you'd like to be a writer at Dinosaur House, and I would love to I'd love to send you some work. Um so that's that's one thing. Um uh if you're an industry leader and you're like, oh wow, the idea of making a kid's book for my industry sounds really compelling. I would love to help you become a kids book author. So you can get in touch with me by you go to uh dinosaurhouse.com and there's a button that says schedule a story design call. That's just to test out the idea with me. So we would do a call together, you're not agreeing to anything. We would just jam on what your kids book could or should be, and then at the end of that, you can decide if if it still sounds interesting.

Publishing, legacy, and next steps

21:04Kent Sanders: Man, I love this. I just absolutely love what you're doing. I think it is so much fun, and it's such a cool and unique way to provide value to people and their kids. I mean, that this is just really, really awesome. So I appreciate you taking time to chat and uh looking forward to seeing all the cool things that you're that are going to be happening in your business in the coming years as well. And maybe I'll be a customer one day too. Who knows?

21:27Timmy Bauer: I I would love that a just because I think I really like your idea for a kid's book. So I would love to see that become a reality. Um, the other thing I forgot to mention, and this is in development. I'm trying to build this thing called monthlykidsbook.com. So essentially we produce kids books. Like that's what my business does. We're producing the these amazing, like the kinds of kids' books that if you're a business, if you're like a uh like an entrepreneurial or just very uh business building kind of person, you would want to read these kids' books to your kids. They're like, what Leadership mean? You know, what is marketing? Like, you know, I want to have a podcast when I grow up, like really awesome stuff. Um, and we're we're just producing a bunch of these. And my theory is if you if I have a bunch of parents that are subscribed to an email list where I'm just sending them digital versions of these books for free, whatever their favorite ones are, they'll go and buy physically. So the whole thing is monthlykidsbook.com is just you subscribe, and I'm just all it is, I'm just sending you free copies, digital copies of our kids' books. And I just know that if you really like one, you'll buy it physically. So I haven't yet built it, but it's gonna be called monthlykidsbook.com. Okay. There actually is a sign up for it. I just haven't yet built out the the actual um emails.

22:45Kent Sanders: Nice. Well, I think that's an amazing idea. And if there's one niche of readers where as my teenage son says, he says, Dad, it's pronounced niche, not niche. But I am from Missouri, so we're known for mispronouncing things. So anyway, if there's one group of things.

23:04Timmy Bauer: So not everybody agrees.

23:06Kent Sanders: Oh, that that is true. That's true. I think if there is one group of readers that definitely likes print copies of the books, it's kids. So I love that idea. I'd say go for it. That's really awesome.

23:19Timmy Bauer: Cool, cool.

23:20Kent Sanders: Timmy, thanks again for having me. Yeah. Yeah, thanks for doing this. It's been a blast. I appreciate your time. Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Timmy Bauer. I had an absolute blast learning about his process for writing a kid's book, as well as what his company, Dinosaur House, does to actually help people who want to write a kid's book. I would say my main takeaway to this is very simply the value of writing a kid's book. You know, there's a lot of reasons to consider doing something like this. If you write regular nonfiction book or if you write adult fiction or some other type of books in a whole different genre, there's a lot of value in thinking about how would you actually handle the illustrations? How would you actually handle writing a story and what would that book be about? There's a lot of value in thinking differently than how you think, particularly when it comes to writing a book for kids, which of course, if you're an adult, a kid's book is a whole different ball of wax than writing like a 160-page nonfiction business book or something like that. So I again, my main takeaway is just the value of writing a kid's book and learning to do something that is radically different than the type of writing that you typically do. And storytelling and learning brevity and learning illustrations and learning something from learning something in a totally different type of work than you typically do, that is really, really valuable. That helps our creative brains and it helps us to get out of our well-defined boxes that sometimes we put ourselves in. And also it's just a lot of fun. And if we're not having fun when we're writing, then why are we doing this anyway? So I'm going to strongly consider writing a kid's book in the next year or two. That's something I've always wanted to do. But now that I've had Timmy on the show, I'm really thinking about it a lot more seriously. So I hope that you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. Also make sure and check out Timmy's website, which is dinosaurhouse.com. And I will also have links to his books and social media links and all that great stuff in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I want to take a moment to let you know about our daily writer membership community. You know, one of the very best ways to develop better habits and impact more people's lives with your writing is to spend time around other successful writers. So if you're tired of feeling isolated and chasing success on your own, then I know you're gonna love the Daily Writer community. For years, I searched for the kind of writing community that I would want to join, but I could never find what I wanted, so I created my own. Some of the features include weekly writing sprints, monthly community calls, book discussions, calls with guest experts, and much more. For more info, you can visit dailywriterlife.comslash community. Thanks, and I'll see you tomorrow.