Writing and composing 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 colorful, beautiful image teeming with life and beauty, painting us a textual painting 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 an instant from the earth to space and from the depths of the sea to the top of a mountain. He manipulates time, place, weather, events, and dates, and is artistic with his words with a delicate feeling until he conveys to the reader, whether a child or an adult, an idea, piece of information, an emotion, or an event. Every writer has a special style through which his tree of creativity blossoms. We cannot compare an apple blossom to an orange blossom; they all become fruits that we savor the unique taste of each one.
Like all types of writing, writing for children is subject to standards that make it stronger and more durable. The professional children's writer should be surrounded by children, communicate with their world, observe them, talk to them, and know their interests and ambitions. He should live with them and among them, and maintain within him a small child who sees the world through the eyes of children. Herein lies the challenge, and this is what will enable him to choose good formulations and texts, thus adding to the child's knowledge and skills and opening imaginative, cultural, and educational windows for him. Among the most important of these standards are:
- A children's book should tell the story of a child like him/her, whom he/she gets to know and experiences the events with, understands his/her problems and feelings, thinks about solutions and arrives at them. The child imitates and identifies with the little heroes of the stories. Sinbad was a child, and the clever Hassan, Morocco, Tarzan, Heidi, Manny the bear, Masha and the Bear, and others. The educator might notice how the child embodies their feelings, acts like them, and borrows some words and sentences from them.
- It is important for the writer to express himself in his own words and from his own point of view, meaning that he avoids the indoctrination of ideas that adults want to convey to the child. Children's books emerge from their world and are written in their own language and in a way that satisfies their curiosity and satisfies their passion and love of 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 the child's concerns and interests and tells a story about his world. Therefore, it is best for its events to be similar to what he experiences and understands, its expressions to be similar to what he expresses, and its methods of seeing and solving problems. This is one of the most important reasons for the success of a children's book.
- Stories present values and virtues, and this is the approach of the Quran and Sunnah. However, values and virtues are not taught directly, but rather must be included implicitly between 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 in order to learn to save... and so on, so that the young reader himself arrives at the desired value at the end of the story. We do not tell the story of Hassan the honest or the thrifty.
- Children's books are connected to their life and surroundings, and they talk about those they love and interact with, for example: their friends, their family, their neighborhood, their city, or anything close to them and within their surroundings. This does not prevent us from presenting children with books that open windows of new knowledge from different environments, but it is preferable for them to resemble the life they know or the people they interact with.
- Children's books are characterized by their positive language, optimism, and joy that dominate their events. This is the language that children love and interact with, and in which wishes, love, hope, courage, and positive feelings are fulfilled. Happy endings are essential in children's stories (even when we describe a problem or obstacle, we must not show negativity or frustration). When a person dies, we present it with strong symbolism, reducing the scenes of sadness and regret narrated in the story, and making the hero move on and overcome it.
- Children's books are filled with magical fantasy. Children love to fly and soar in unrealistic worlds and ideas that fulfill their need for imagination to grow and emulate their passion to escape the confines of reality. Children want to enter the rabbit hole, walk on the clouds, and jump between mountains; therefore, they are fascinated by stories of superheroes and fantasy stories of all kinds.
- Children's stories develop language and provide experiences, so improving the level of language and discourse is required to develop vocabulary and acquired skills, provided that the words are not so difficult that the child will not be able to understand them. Children love repetition and the recurrence of a word, sentence, or drawing in the story. They also love funny and playful phrases, and for speech to have rhythm and melody, and they are happy to always learn new words.
- It is good that texts are not always so easy that the child feels that they are for children. Rather, they should be free from stereotypes and boredom, and use rhetorical language that includes some new concepts for the child to learn. They are explained through text and drawings so that the image presents what the text does not say, without using too many difficult words or complex terms and texts that make the child feel helpless and unable to understand them. Whenever 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 rely heavily on good illustrations. How many wonderful texts have been wronged by drawings that have lowered their standard? This makes us judge the success of a children's book by the visual imagery with which the illustrator conveys to young readers what the writer wants to say, and sometimes details that the text doesn't mention. Therefore, the writer must 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 presenting a book to a child: the uniqueness and distinction of each child. Children are not equal in abilities and have not been exposed to the same upbringing method. We cannot say that they have the same skills or go through the same experiences, which makes it difficult to accurately determine the age for which the book is intended. This makes it important that there are different levels of texts, between the easy and clear and the improved and creative. It is nice for the text to go beyond the direct and familiar. There are children who are able to appreciate advanced levels of literature, while this is difficult for those with less experience and skill. It is not possible to compare a child who has been read to since he was an infant with another child who does not read and is not read to.
Finally, a children's writer must know that no matter how beautiful and creative his text is, it is only one part that is not complete without other success factors that determine its quality, such as illustrations, production, and printing. Also, the standard for success and judgment of a book are not critics or parents. The main judge who proves the success of the book is the child himself . If he is attracted to it and decides to buy it , then the book has succeeded !! And if he wants you to read it again and again, or requests your books specifically because he wants to read you as a writer , then congratulations !!! You have succeeded !!!