Writing and authorship are a kind of creativity. The author senses meanings and weaves concepts to elevate the imagination, transforming sunrise, sunset, and the phenomena we see as natural into a beautiful, colorful picture teeming with life and beauty. He paints for us a textual tableau that we enjoy reading. It is difficult to frame or mold creativity, as the writer must have a kind of freedom to create characters, write feelings, and depict events, to transport us in a moment from the earth to space and from the depths of the sea to the top of the mountain. He manipulates time, place, weather, events, and dates, and he crafts his words with a delicate feeling so that he can convey to the reader, whether child or adult, an idea, information, emotion, or event. Every writer has a special style with which the tree of his creativity blossoms. We cannot compare an apple blossom with an orange blossom; they will all become fruits, and we will enjoy the unique taste of each.
Like all forms of writing, children's literature is subject to standards that enhance its strength and solidity. A professional children's writer should ideally be surrounded by children, connected to their world, observing and conversing with them, and understanding their interests and aspirations. They should live among them, retaining a childlike quality within themselves that sees the world through children's eyes. This is where the challenge lies, and it is what will enable them to choose good formulations and texts that enrich the child's knowledge and skills, opening imaginative, cultural, and educational windows for them. Among the most important of these standards are:
- The child’s book should tell the story of a child like him, whom he recognizes and lives through the events with, understands his problem and feelings, thinks about solutions and reaches them. The child imitates and identifies with the heroes of the little stories. Sinbad was a child, and so were Clever Hassan, Morocco, Tarzan, Heidi, Manny the Bear, Masha and the Bear… and others. Perhaps the educator notices how the child adopts their feelings, behaves like them, and quotes some of their words and sentences.
- It is important for the writer to express himself in his own words and from his own point of view, meaning that he should avoid indoctrinating him with an idea that adults want to convey to him. A child's book comes from his world and is formulated in his language and in a way that satisfies his curiosity and fulfills his passion and love for knowledge. Writing for children is characterized by spontaneity, innocence, simplicity of expression, and direct formulations without affectation in speech.
- A good children's book reflects their concerns and interests and tells their story. Therefore, it is best that its events are similar to what they experience and understand, and the expressions are similar to what they express, and that they reflect their methods of seeing and solving problems. This is one of the most important reasons for the success of a children's book.
- In stories, values and virtues are presented, and this is the approach of the Qur’an and Sunnah. However, values and virtues are not taught directly, but rather they must be implicitly included among the events and facts. The same applies to advice and guidance. We tell the story of a child whom we want to teach the value of health and honesty, and another who works to learn about saving… and so on, so that the young reader himself reaches the desired value at the end of the story, and we do not say the story of Hassan the honest or the thrifty.
- A child's book is linked to his life and his surroundings, so he talks about those he loves and deals with, for example: his friends, his family, his neighborhood, his city, or anything near him and within his environment. This does not prevent us from providing the child with books that open new windows of knowledge from different environments, but it is preferable that they resemble his life that he knows or the people he deals with.
- Children's books are characterized by their positive language, and by the optimism and joy that pervades their events. This is the language that children love and interact with, and in which wishes, love, hope, courage, and positive feelings are realized. Happy endings are essential in children's stories (even when we present a problem or obstacle, we must not show negativity or frustration). When a person dies, we present it with strong symbolism and reduce the scenes of sadness and sorrow narrated in the story, and we make the hero move on and overcome it.
- Children’s books are dominated by imagination with its captivating charm. They love to fly and soar in unrealistic worlds and ideas that meet the need for their imagination to grow and mimic their passion to escape the narrowness of reality. The child wants to go down the rabbit hole, walk on the clouds, and jump between mountains; therefore, he is attracted to superhero stories and all kinds of fantasy stories.
- Children's stories develop language and provide experiences, so raising the level of language and speech is required to develop vocabulary and acquired skills, provided that the words are not too difficult for a stage in which the child will not be able to understand them. Young children like repetition and that there is a word, sentence or drawing that is repeated in the story. They also like funny and playful phrases, and that the speech has a tone and rhythm, and they are happy to learn new words always.
- It is good that texts are not always too easy, making the child feel that they are for young children. Rather, they should break away from the stereotypical and boring, and use rhetorical language that includes some new concepts for the child to learn. They should explain with text and drawing, so that the picture presents what the text does not say, without using too many difficult words or terms and complex texts that make the child feel helpless and unable to understand them. When a balance is achieved between suspense and clarity, between similes, metaphors and direct descriptions, then that book is suitable for the child.
- Children's books depend heavily on good illustrations. How many wonderful texts have been ruined by illustrations that lowered their quality? This makes us describe the success of a children's book as depending on the visual image through which the illustrator conveys to young readers what the writer wants to say, and sometimes details that the text does not mention. Therefore, the writer should not skimp on his text by searching for a good illustrator, and this is what makes children's books more expensive.
There is an important fact that we must pay attention to when we present a book to a child, which is: the uniqueness of each child and his distinction. Children are not equal in abilities and have not been exposed to the same upbringing style, and we cannot say that they have the same skills, or go through the same experiences. This makes it difficult to accurately determine the age for which the book is directed, which makes it important to have different levels of texts, between the simple and clear and the creatively enhanced. It is nice for the text to go beyond the direct and familiar, as there are children who are able to appreciate advanced levels of literature, while this is difficult for those who are less experienced and skilled. A child who has been read to since he was an infant cannot be compared to another child who does not read and is not read to.
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Finally, children's authors must understand that no matter how beautiful and creative their text is, it's only one part; it only comes together when other factors contribute to its success, such as illustrations, layout, and printing. Furthermore, the true measure of a book's success isn't critics or parents. The ultimate judge is the child themselves . If the child is captivated and decides to buy it, then the book has succeeded ! And if they want to reread it again and again, or specifically request your books because they want to read your work as an author, then congratulations ! You've succeeded !