I have a children’s book that I’ve written and drawn. Not just a proposal, I’ve got a finished package, kid-tested-and-approved, ready to go out the door. And to be clear, it’s not one of these sly, knowing books that are really aimed at adults, and view the actual children in the audience as an afterthought — it was written as a genuine kid’s book for the roughly kindergarten-aged crowd, albeit one which would amuse parents as well, or at least not cause them to weep with existential despair at the prospect of reading it aloud for the fiftieth time. On this topic, I speak from experience.
It’s important to me to see this one in bookstores, if only to show my own kid, who’s been following the process from its inception, how persistence can turn ideas into reality. My agent’s been shopping it around but it’s going slower than I’d like — I think partly because people tend to pigeonhole you, and it may be difficult for some to imagine how a verbose political cartoonist such as myself could also be a straightforward children’s book author. In other words, how can someone whose career has been devoted to mastering the interplay of words and pictures ever, you know, create a work of … words and pictures?
(Also: you’d think that having an established readership would actually be an advantage. I mean, yes, it’s a different arena, but I’m guessing that some percentage of my readers have — or at least have friends and relatives with — children. Kind of a built-in audience, you know?)
Anyway … in the off chance that someone reading this is, or knows, a children’s book editor — shoot me an email (contact info is over to the left), and I’ll pass it along to my agent. The rest of you, move along, nothing to see here.