There’s a myth out there is that writing children’s books should be easy. They are, after all, aimed at the very young. What most people don’t realize, is that children’s books are often much more difficult to write than books for those older than 15 years of age. The reasons are long and involved.  For me, being able to absorb the information and then translate it into a child’s level of understanding and vocabulary was the most difficult.  As an example, let’s take the book X-Ray Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Creatures.

As the title states there are ‘other’ prehistoric creatures. The very first thing I learned upon gathering my research is that pterosaurs (the ones that fly), and plesiosaurs (the ones that swim) aren’t dinosaurs! WHAT?? Nope, they aren’t. I knew from that moment I had to absorb a lot of information before I could put this in kid speak. I also discovered that most six-year-olds knew more than I did.

This book took a long time to write, after-all, rhyming with pachycephalosaurus is, I found, impossible. But it turned out to be quite informative, funny in some places, and way better than I could have envisioned. And I made some amazing discoveries, of course they’re dinosaurs so of course! Did you know that archaeopteryx was small enough that he could have flown up T-Rex’s nose? Not that anybody or anything would want to do that on purpose.

The illustrations are works of art by Cody Hooper-Kaufmann. He gave a new artistic flair to terrifying creatures!

And so, dear readers, I leave you with this poem: 

Triceratops

The prize for the largest dino head of them all

Belongs to the triceratops' eight-foot skull.

Built like a rhino, but big as an elephant,

Her four-foot long horns were never irrelevant.