{"id":375,"date":"2014-02-04T19:53:15","date_gmt":"2014-02-04T17:53:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/suchwanderings.wordpress.com\/?p=375"},"modified":"2014-02-04T19:53:15","modified_gmt":"2014-02-04T17:53:15","slug":"writing-for-small-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/snuu.kapsi.fi\/saranorja\/2014\/02\/04\/writing-for-small-children\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing for small children"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I had my first experience in writing a story for a small child this January. A dear friend’s child had his third birthday, and I decided to make him a picture book as a present, as evidenced by the pic on the left.<\/p>\n

Little did I know what I was in for!<\/p>\n

I mean, I hadn’t imagined that writing for children would be easy. Far from it. But I hadn’t really needed to think about it before. I’ve always wanted to write children’s stuff too, but more in a writing exercise sense than out of a want to become profiled as a children’s writer or anything. I think most of the stories I want to tell will be for a more grown-up audience (although of course, no need to exclude kids from the audience as such – when I was small, I read a lot of stuff that was “too difficult” and so on). <\/p>\n

Anyway, I had the idea in mind for quite a while. Since the kid currently adores dinosaurs and spaceships, I thought I’d write a story that gave him both. Because why not? However, as always, the idea was the easy bit. It took me ages to actually get writing, because I was so unsure of how to write for a 3-year-old. <\/p>\n

When I finally got to it, I was surprised at how easily it came out. I’d thought out a simple enough story, with repetition and a happy ending. It was difficult to keep my language <\/em>simple enough, though. Here are some things I had to pay extra attention to: <\/p>\n