Celebrate your child's love of learning

© Wondertime

What's the key to inspired storytelling? Ask Eric Carle. Or Mo Willems. Or Jane Yolen. We put the question to nine of our favorite children's book authors and illustrators. Their consensus: The same things that stoke their creativity can work for your kids. We feel a happy ending coming on.

Get 5 DIY Tips for Creating Books

Share stories and photos of your child's homemade book creations at our Little Storyteller's Group

Marc Brown creator of Arthur

Where I get my ideas is not a mystery: I get them from everyday life. Most of the characters in my Arthur series were taken from people I knew: family members, teachers, third-grade classmates, and friends. I like kids to know that great ideas for stories are around them every day. Try exploring "What if?" scenarios: "What if someone left the rhinoceros's cage unlocked at the zoo?" All it takes is one imaginative question, and you're on your way.

Having lots of paper around helps. My uncle worked at the Hammermill paper company and I would give anything to spend the weekend at my aunt and uncle's house because I could just draw with limitless amounts of paper. And that is a real luxury — forget about the electronic gadgets. Have paper and pens and markers.

Daniel Pinkwater author of The Neddiad and The Yggyssey

I believe that the storytelling skill is something that comes with language and being exposed to stories, and rather than nurture or enhance, I think all we really have to do is not interfere. Very early on, kids understand what a narrative is, and at almost the same time, begin to create their own [narratives]. My approach to writing children's books is to go back into my memory and familiarize myself with the child that I was and who still exists within me.

Reading together offers so many opportunities for discussion. Let your child know that it's okay to vary the story or to make up your own. A lot of kids are very ready to discuss what they think should have been the outcome of a story. Ask, "What do you think should happen now?" Or ask what they think is happening on the page before you read the text. Prereading children will make up a story appropriate to the pictures, having nothing to do with — and in many cases, probably superior to — the written text. It would be a horrible mistake to say you have to give equal value to the text and pictures. You don't. You can do as you please. The same rules apply in reading to your dog.

Eric Carle author-illustrator of The Very Hungry Caterpillar among 70-some titles

Each child is an individual and should be encouraged to express herself in her own way. If you provide your children with simple art supplies and sit at the table and draw with them, if you read books together and ask them to tell you a story, they will understand that you value who they are and the particular way they express what they're curious about. I have always loved to draw, since I was a young boy. And I can still recall the bright sunlit room and colorful paints of my kindergarten and the warm encouragement of my teacher Miss Frickey. While I did not grow up with a lot of books or create books of my own as a child, I was surrounded by a large family who was always talking and telling stories. I now realize that's where my ability as a storyteller comes from.

Lois Ehlert author-illustrator of Leaf Man and Wag a Tail

When kids want to know how they can be an artist or a writer, I say start by having your own spot. It doesn't have to be large or complex, just a place that is quiet and conducive to thinking. If they have their place and supplies all ready, ideas will come out when they're ready. Just making materials available is enough. Wrapping paper, sticks, leaves, seeds: Art supplies are really all around us.

David Wiesner author-illustrator of the wordless picture books Flotsam and Tuesday

Before kids can read on their own, they're reading pictures. The fun of a wordless picture book is to have the child tell it, or to do it together. It's up to you, the reader, to figure out what's happening and guide the story. There's this desire of "I want to tell the story too." And so wordless books become this wonderful springboard for creative writing and inspiring storytelling. It's perfectly okay to tell it however you want.

Norton Juster author of The Phantom Tollbooth and The Hello, Goodbye Window

I used to put on plays with my daughter when she was a child, and now I do this with my granddaughter. My wife is always the audience. I'm the stage manager, I pull the imaginary curtain, and I play all the minor parts. My granddaughter, of course, is always the princess. We set the scene — for example, there's a knock at the door — and then we make up our dialogue. You just let the kids go. It's a wonderful way to get kids to understand characters and how to make up their own. You see, most kids view the characters as someone you put onstage when you need them, and when you're finished with them you hang them up in the closet. But stories are generated from the characters: how they act, how they feel, their personality traits. Making up plays not only teaches them about stories, it teaches them about people.

Jane Yolen author of Owl Moon and more than 300 other books

When our family went camping, each child would get a new notebook and extra paper to keep a trip journal. We did memoir writing that way, making drawings or pasting down things from the trip and commenting on them. The parents need to be a part of it as well. If you aren't, you're not saying this is important work. But if you do it with them, you're saying it's fun, it's valuable.

Whether the child was 5, 7, or 9, and whether they could write or had to just dictate to me, we got something from each child to put down. Even a 3-year-old can collect stuff, glue it down, and tell you about it. Just ask, "What should we write here? Should we say how we felt about it? Do you remember what those tracks were like? The color of the sky?" Remind them of the things you've seen.

At the end, we'd get this wonderful portrait of the trip that we could talk about when we got home. The kids had engaged their writing, listening, and looking skills. But they also had a relationship with the trip that was different than if we had not recorded it. All you need is a nice book, a bunch of colored pens, photographs, and a lot of glue.

Michael Chesworth author-illustrator of Alphaboat and illustrator of This Is Your Life Cycle

I think, especially for children, pictures are very immediate, and they understand how pictures tell a story before they understand how words tell a story. It's a nice entrance into the whole process of storytelling.

Tell your children a simple story — maybe one from your own childhood — and suggest that they illustrate it. They'll see that the pictures add something more to the narrative: more detail, more color, more humor. There is a magical transformation that occurs because the pictures are different from the words. It helps kids realize that the words don't always tell the whole story and that the pictures can change it. In this way, kids see the cogs and wheels of storytelling.

Mo Willems author-illustrator of Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed (forthcoming)

Making stories is cool. It's cool to draw things and make up adventures. One of the best ways you can prove how cool it is to your kids is do it yourself. My wife, my daughter, and I often make up a cartoon story together — all of us drawing on the same big piece of paper. I've noticed that children's drawings unfold chronologically. They draw a character ("This is the Mermaid Ninja"), then an environment ("He's on the Moon Sea"), then fill in specifics ("This is his treehouse. He uses a rocket hat to get there. Here's a ladder in case the rocket runs out of gas."). By the time the adventure is complete, the page may be an insane mess filled with odd props and multiple renderings of the same character. Simply ask your kid what's going on and the whole gripping adventure will unfold.

Like many kids, I started ripping off my favorite characters (Charlie Brown and Spider-Man) before I began creating my own (Lazer Brain). Creating your own adventures with a character you know and love is a great way to begin as a storyteller. The easier a character is to draw, the better. I design my characters as simply as possible to facilitate a youthful indifference to copyright laws.

5 DIY Book Tips

Loreen Leedy, author and illustrator of Look at My Book ($18, Holiday House) — a kids' guide to book­making — suggests five DIY ideas:

• Basic: Fold a few sheets of paper like a greeting card. Staple down the crease. Extra credit: Trim the book so that it's long and narrow (say, for a story about trees or giants) or cut it down into a palm-size read.
• Bound: Follow the directions above, but instead of stapling, punch two holes along the folded edge. Thread a bright ribbon through each hole and tie into a bow.
• Accordion: No binding necessary: Fold a legal-size piece of paper into four panels as if you were making a fan. Each panel becomes a "page."
• Scroll: Choose a wrapping paper with a blank underside. Cut to fit around a cardboard paper-towel tube and glue one edge of the paper to the tube (printed side facing down). Write and draw on the blank side, or tape a series of drawings to it. When finished, roll the paper around the tube and tie closed with yarn or ribbon.
• Shape: Stack several sheets of paper and cut into a simple shape (heart, cloud, dog bone). Staple or bind the left edge.

For kids who dream of seeing their names in print, try tikatok.com. Upload artwork and text into a customizable layout, and a professionally printed book will be mailed to you. Books start at around $20.

For more sophisticated design tools and more options (like dust jackets), use blurb.com. Books start at around $13.

Want to keep the computer out of it? With this kit, your kid writes and illustrates his book on provided pages. Mail them in and get a hardcover book. (Send Away Storybook Publisher, Discovery Kids, $20, shop.discovery.com)

The child authors of the books featured here used Newbury albums by Kolo. Pages can easily be added or removed. ($35, kolo.com)