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If your child loves to write stories and draw pictures, you may be wondering how to preserve their creativity. In this post, I’ll show you how I turned my son’s handwritten, illustrated story into a real hardcover book using Shutterfly. It was easy, affordable, and made him feel like a published author!
Where the Inspiration Came From
My younger son LOVES to write stories and add his own illustrations to them. He has been highly influenced by Dav Pilkey of Dog Man and Captain Underpants’ fame, and by Jeff Kinney, author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. In the back of every Dog Man book are several pages with drawing tutorials for the characters from that story. We would often sit together and follow the tutorials and learn to draw the characters. Once he had them down, he would draw his own scenes with these characters.
He is also very imaginative and creative and loves to come up with stories. Often, they are arranged in comic strip format, but he also will staple several pages together and draft a homemade book. I’m not exaggerating when I say he has written over 50 “books.”
His Creative Process
He has a good friend from school, and they were able to be together for both third and fourth grades. In third grade, whenever they had free time or indoor recess, the two of them would conspire and write stories together. They came up with their own main characters that are in every story. Often my son would be the illustrator, and his friend would write the stories they came up with together.
After working on it for who knows how long, my son brought home his biggest book yet (47 pages!). He was so proud of their work and asked me if I could get it published. He wanted to get it into the library system as well so other kids could read it. I let him know that publishing a book can be quite difficult to navigate, and I wasn’t sure we could self-publish his book.
Despite my objections, he continued to ask how we could get it published (he’s a very persistent person). So, I started thinking of what I could do.
Turning the Story into a Hardcover Book
I have made family “yearbooks” every year with pictures of our year in review, so I was very comfortable making photo books. I wondered if I could make him a hardback “printed” version of his book.
I took his book apart so I could scan every page. Once I had scanned the pages, I went back through and cropped them, because not all of them were lined up squarely. I found a simple 8” x 10” photo book template and uploaded every page to the photo book. I included page numbers. I added a title cover and spine with his name and the name of his co-author. (He and his friend also wrote an “About the Authors” section!) I tried to include every detail to make it look like a “real book.” I checked it a million times. And then I waited for Shutterfly to offer a unlimited free pages sale – seriously, never pay full price for a photo book.
The Big Reveal
Ten days later, the book arrived, and I could not wait to surprise my son with it (he hadn’t known I was doing any of this.) The look of absolute joy on his face was priceless. He felt like a real published author (and asked again if we could get it in the library, ha!). I had him sign it too.
If you ask him what he wants to be when he grows up, he will tell you he wants to be an author. I loved getting to interview the Lindsay Brothers last month (see part 1 here and part 2 here) and ask them what advice they had for would-be authors. I was able to share their advice with my son, and he seemed to take it to heart. I always tell my son that I will be the first person to buy his book(s) and the first person in line at his book signings.
Check out this video about another kid who was determined to get his book into the library – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWBFoJsB_O4.
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