The good, the bad and the ugly of children's books

There are an awful lot of childrens books out there. Just visit any library and you'll see what I mean. Even the space dedicated to the children's section in a Borders or Barnes and Nobles seems to rival the square footage of our house. And you can pretty much find every book ever written for kids. From Baby Einstein books for the babies to potty training for the toddlers to learn to read books for the Kindergarteners. Some of them are great - classics even - like The Hungry Little Caterpillar, Good Night Moon and all the Dr. Seuss books. Some of them are so-so, like picture books with captions under each picture that just don't flow well (and leave you wondering, which caption should I be reading next?) And some of them are just plain BAD. I won't go into any specifics here, but any parent with little kids knows what I'm talking about. Those are the books that leave you wondering how they ever got published to begin with. Well it was those thoughts after reading one of those books that led me to begin my next project (yeah, like I don't have enough stuff going on now, right?) But I'm sick of reading B these stupid stories night after night, so I've started writing one for him.

I don't know how it's going to turn out yet, or if I'll even finish it. Writing has never been my strong suit (sj can attest to this fact thanks to that year of Honors English we took together in high school which she loved and I detested!) Receiving one assignment after another to come up with essays, poems, short stories, etc. - UGH! I prefer to write on my own time and on my own terms. And somehow I've managed to keep a blog going for about a year now so hopefully I've gotten better at getting my thoughts down on paper or Word or notepad or whatever program I'm typing in that day. I'm not the most articulate person in the world, but I do try. With that said, I doubt anyone will ever see or hear this little story except for J and B. And maybe my FunnyGal friends who I'm sure could offer plenty of constructive criticism on my grammar and some literary insight for my literary-challenged, techy brain. If it turns out to be pretty good, I might even post some of it here. So far I only have 2 pages, but last night B asked me to read the first page twice. So apparently someone likes it! I'm not going to give away the plot here, but it's definitely leaning towards being a fantasy. Oh and it involves a little boy and a tree house.