The Boogie Books Blog

We have a predilection to helping our children learn the most amazing gamete of skills and often the journey starts with an interest at home before you even begin to look to add to the richness of their education with extra-curricular activities. If you are passionate about literacy and about children creating their own book(s!) this may be the ideal way to kick-start the project. 

1. Start a collection of images ‘just because’.  When your child sees a particular image in a magazine / on the internet / in photos you have taken (wherever!) they like, allow them to add it to their collection.  The idea of collecting images in this way is inherently powerful because:

• It allows them to create a visual diary for reference as they develop their own illustrations;
• Gives them images they already have an attachment to and feel safe with, which means if we set them a ‘free write’ exercise, they would already be comfortable.  (Later down the track, we will show them how ‘words beget words’ and free writing, using an image as a launching point, can amount to something!)
• Gives them purpose.  Collecting with the directive of sourcing from the internet / magazines from op shops / photos they have taken… means the children can source images in a way that makes sense to their world.  This is not a task that is reliant on resources or money – rather it is dependent on the children’s ability to work out a means of accessing images which fits their world.  Of course, if you have a group of children for whom this is unmanageable, then simply supply a mixture of magazines (Doctors surgeries usually update theirs monthly / op shops usually can’t give them away / your own reference group will usually have a stash which they have deemed disposable)… The real gift for this is TIME.  You can’t rush something like this!  You have to be able to flick through your reference source, effectively allowing it to become a right brain activity where time doesn’t matter and choose something ‘just because’.

2. Now, hunt and gather reference material with purpose!  Your child may have an idea for a picture book?  Now go and find inspirational images that he or she may be able to draw upon for the illustrations. Not many of us can draw what is in our minds-eye; rather, we need to construct an image that conveys our thoughts and emotions and intent!  The most amazing example of this was an exhibition I was lucky enough to see in Brisbane ages ago - Graham Base’s original illustrations for The Waterhole.  Base had a collection of photos he had taken himself when he went on a safari in Africa.  They languished in the bottom drawer and when he discovered them, he had an idea.  He ‘builds’ his illustrations using images he draws onto tracing paper.  Once he has all the images assembled, he finalises the illustration by tracing it off using a lightbox and ends up with a finished drawing.  It is layering at its best, using found images, his own photos, reference materials and of course, it all hinges on the page design which is truly his!  

3. And finally – ask them to write… it can be in the form of stick figures and it could be diagrammatic; it could be a list; it could be a story with potential… On a page in their reference diary / folders, have a blank page available for them to simply record words… It is important to reiterate that this is unlike anything they have done before… At this stage, no-one is collecting their folders / marking them / commenting… This is just for them!

It is more luck than management, (and the insight and passion from a teacher at Silverton Primary School, Ms Bianca Thaens) that the first Child Writes class has started in Victoria.  Having had the start date for the project a month earlier than we both first anticipated, we needed to be a little creative. The '3 awesome ways to start a picture book project' was the result!