Activity And Project

Children's Book Project

Grades
9 - 12
Activity Time
3+ hours (can be done over different days)
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Activity Description

Teens who provide care for a younger sibling or neighborhood children are always looking for ways to entertain and teach the young people with whom they work.  With a teen, create picture books that the teen caregiver can then share with children.

Why This Is Helpful

Teen caregivers have probably been reading stories for a long time, but writing and illustrating their own takes the understanding of storytelling to a different level. This project will help teens gain a better understanding of the different elements of a children's story, the importance of illustrations, and how to write for a specific audience. When teens share their children's books with younger children, they also practice valuable leadership skills.

This activity was modified from the ReadWriteThink lesson plan "The Children's Picture Book Project."

What You Need

Here's What To Do

  1. Before starting this activity, you and the teen should take a look at a few children's picture books as examples for ideas on ways to proceed with an original picture book. Use the Recommended Children's Picture Books as a reference.
  2. Think about what's appealing about the picture books you looked at. What are their themes? (For example, acceptance of others, family dynamics, physical growth, fear of the unknown, and so forth.)  Briefly discuss why these themes are appealing to young readers. How do they connect with the teen's own experiences? What theme is most interesting to the teen or the children with whom he or she works?
  3. Read through the Tips for Writing a Children's Picture Book with the teen to get ideas for how to organize the new book.
  4. Let the teen use the Story Map tool to start planning his or her story, describing the characters, setting, conflict, and resolution.  Print out the finished Story Map.
  5. Now use the Plot Diagram to decide what events the teen wants to include in his or her story and the order for the events. Print out the Plot Diagram when all the events are included in the desired order.
  6. Fold a piece of notebook paper into four or six boxes to create a storyboard for the book. Each box or pane of the storyboard represents a page of the book. Have the teen sketch illustrations and text for each page of the book. Remind the teen that these are just rough sketches to give him or her an idea of where to place text and illustrations in the final book.  
  7. Using art supplies and/or any bookmaking resources, continue working on the book until the teen is satisfied with it. Make sure it has an attractive front and back cover.
  8. Check out the Publishing Tips with the teen before he or she reads the book to a younger child.
  9. After you and the teen have worked through this process once together, encourage teen caregivers to share this skill and knowledge with young children and make books with them!

More Ideas To Try

Caitlin Stein
Parent
Do you know of any resources available that would allow me to create a finished product-a book. My daughter is forever creating stories and I would love to turn them into books she could share.
Jaime R. Wood
College/Professor
Caitlin, I am in the process of working with ReadWriteThink to make a printout with instructions for binding your own books three different ways. I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but it should be available on the site in the next week or two. The title will be "Three Ways to Bind a Handmade Book." Good luck! Jaime
Caitlin Stein
Parent
Do you know of any resources available that would allow me to create a finished product-a book. My daughter is forever creating stories and I would love to turn them into books she could share.
Jaime R. Wood
College/Professor
Caitlin, I am in the process of working with ReadWriteThink to make a printout with instructions for binding your own books three different ways. I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but it should be available on the site in the next week or two. The title will be "Three Ways to Bind a Handmade Book." Good luck! Jaime
C. Bohannon-Brown
K-12 Teacher
Hi Jaime,
I stumbled on your lesson plan by sheer divine intervention. I was thinking about a way to get my after-school students interested in making their own environmentally-friendly e-books. Your children's book project is a welcomed find. Even though my students are only in the 4th and 5th grades, I believe that I can motivate them to create wonderful non-fiction books for younger students. Thanks for the wonderful guidelines. Cindy
Jen
K-12 Teacher
@Caitlin- I use www.storyjumper.com to create and print books. So far, so good.
C. Bohannon-Brown
K-12 Teacher
Hi Jaime,
I stumbled on your lesson plan by sheer divine intervention. I was thinking about a way to get my after-school students interested in making their own environmentally-friendly e-books. Your children's book project is a welcomed find. Even though my students are only in the 4th and 5th grades, I believe that I can motivate them to create wonderful non-fiction books for younger students. Thanks for the wonderful guidelines. Cindy
Jen
K-12 Teacher
@Caitlin- I use www.storyjumper.com to create and print books. So far, so good.
Caitlin Stein
Parent
Do you know of any resources available that would allow me to create a finished product-a book. My daughter is forever creating stories and I would love to turn them into books she could share.
Jaime R. Wood
College/Professor
Caitlin, I am in the process of working with ReadWriteThink to make a printout with instructions for binding your own books three different ways. I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but it should be available on the site in the next week or two. The title will be "Three Ways to Bind a Handmade Book." Good luck! Jaime
C. Bohannon-Brown
K-12 Teacher
Hi Jaime,
I stumbled on your lesson plan by sheer divine intervention. I was thinking about a way to get my after-school students interested in making their own environmentally-friendly e-books. Your children's book project is a welcomed find. Even though my students are only in the 4th and 5th grades, I believe that I can motivate them to create wonderful non-fiction books for younger students. Thanks for the wonderful guidelines. Cindy
Jen
K-12 Teacher
@Caitlin- I use www.storyjumper.com to create and print books. So far, so good.

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