I think these titles are really intended to appeal to the book-loving adult who will be reading this book five ten twenty times a day. But let’s be honest: “2 rich gentlemen” is no substitute for Austen’s actual story. Perhaps a better alternative would be picture books that develop a love of storytelling in kids AND entertain the reader-writer parents. For our youngest FWR readers and their grownups, here are 5 picture books that will delight writers and writerly offspring alike. No kids? Actually, these are cool enough (and funny enough) that you may want to pick them up for yourself.

1. The Monster at the End of This Book
This is a classic in its own right—and if you haven’t seen it, please do yourself a favor and read it now (and then buy a copy, please). An alarmed Grover notices that the title page promises a monster at the end of the book and begs the reader not to turn any pages. Of course, the reader is pleased to disobey. But The Monster at the End of This Book is immensely satisfying for writers of all ages. As Bret Anthony Johnston points out in a Glimmer Train essay, writers can learn quite a lot from lovable furry ol’ Grover: When your readers want something, do not give it to them.

2. We Are in a Book! by Mo Willems
An heir to The Monster at the End of This Book, We Are in a Book! follows Piggy (that’s the pig) and Gerald (that’s the elephant), who discover that they are–gasp!–IN A BOOK. They have fun making the reader say funny words, but what will happen to them when the book ends? Because, after all, as Piggy notes, “All books end.”

Metafiction for the early reader? Yes please.

3. Harold and The Purple Crayon, by Crockett Johnson
Another classic (published in 1955), this title follows the eponymous Harold and his eponymous purple crayon on an adventure that subtly parallels the creative process. Everything Harold draws comes to life, and along the way his story frightens him, spirals out of control, and moves in unexpected directions before resolving itself in a very satisfying way. Sound familiar to you?

4. The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, by John Scieszka
In this parody of the Three Little Pigs, the wolf tells his version of the story—and surprise, surprise, it’s quite different from the pigs’ version. After accidentally bumping off one of the pigs, the wolf offers a deadpan explanation for eating him: “It seemed like a shame to leave a perfectly good ham dinner lying there in the straw. So I ate it up. Think of it as a cheeseburger just lying there.” It’s a study in the importance of viewpoint, with more than a dash of black humor, and writers will chuckle gleefully alongside their children.

5. Keep Our Secrets, by Jordan Crane
This picture book is published by McSweeney’s, which tells you something right off the bat. Readers rub the color-changing ink on each page to revealing that nothing around them is as it seems: The cat has been taken over by mice! There’s a dog in the piano! Writers truck in secrets, and this book teaches children the joy of delving into dark spaces to see what’s hidden. To see it in action, check out this walkthrough by McSweeney’s editor/art director Brian McMullen and his son Alton.

What are your favorite picture books for writers and their kids? Share in the comments!

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Image credit: Flickr - stopthegears

I used to say that in order to get any writing done, I should hire someone to stand behind me with a stick and hit me on the head anytime I wasn’t working. I imagined someone along the lines of The Rock, or at least Queen Latifah, who embodied just such a character (more or less) in Stranger Than Fiction—a sweet movie despite its amazingly unrealistic portrayal of the writing life. “Motivator” might have been a good job title.

Well, now I have a Motivator, but he doesn’t look anything like I expected. Trying to write while taking care of a young baby is incredibly challenging, and something upon which wiser minds than mine have ruminated. On The Millions, the child-free Sonya Chung tackled “The Mommy Problem,” and FWR contributor and writer-mom Danielle Lazarin responded in her essay “‘The Mommy Problem,’ and the larger notion of life beyond work,” a year ago. Elsewhere, many other writers have wrestled with the issue of “the pram in the hall.”

In the most recent Glimmer Train bulletin, Lisa Catherine Harper offers a different perspective on combining parenthood and writing. She notes:

[T]he birth of my first child unexpectedly made everything in my life better—including my writing. My colleagues with children encouraged me while I was pregnant: never again will you have writer’s block. They were right, not because I would find new material in my children (although certainly I did) but because my writing life became more urgent. I didn’t have time to have writer’s block. I had minimal child care (by choice), so if I didn’t write—with focus and dedication—in those hours when my daughter slept, they were lost to me forever. Procrastination had no place when Ella needed to nurse, nor did it any longer have a place in my writing schedule. To survive, my writing had to become as immediate and present as my daughter.

I don’t know if that’s always possible, but it’s a wonderful goal, whether you have children or not. After all, we might all be better writers if our writing was “as immediate and present” as an infant. It’s hard to avoid procrastination, but if our “babies”—our novels and stories and essays—were as insistent as literal babies, refusing to be ignored, imagine how productive we might be.

The painter Agnes Martin said to Susan York, a sculptor who’d sought out Martin as a mentor: “Never have children. Do not live the middle-class life. Never do anything that will take away from your work.” York wrote about it in 2005 (the conversation happened in 1983). I was 32 in 2005, I still “had time.” And yet the words burned on my brain even then.

In my thesis workshop at my MFA program, our director, Eileen Pollack, said to us one night, you know, if you want to go do something else, or be something else besides a writer, that’s fine. My first reaction was to be insulted by this idea—I had wanted to be (assumed) I would be a writer since I was a child; I wasn’t, at the cusp of my career, going to get sucked into something else. I was vehement in my belief that there was no something else. I realize now that the wounded feeling was mostly fear: fear that I’d fail and need to invent a something else, and fear that my desire to have a family would swallow me whole: that I would indeed choose a life of parenting because it would be harder to fail at that than at being a writer.

And now, a few years out of the program, I’m no longer insulted. Outside of the bubble where I had to be, intensely, a writer, I understand that Eileen’s comment was permission to live a life with room for other identities, even if those identities take us away from our work. Work can be your life, but your life can (and I’d argue, should be) bigger than your work. As writers, sometimes we stumble into things that fulfill us that aren’t writing—the most discussed being parenthood, but also other professions, and occupations—and that to shut them out because we are so intent on being writers with a capital W is to perhaps miss out on these other things in life that often make us better writers–because they deepen the range of our experience and emotions, because they show us a new perspective, or simply because they give us money or time or some other sort of permission we need to write. Or, as the case may be, not to write.

I am still a little afraid. I’ve already made my choice to be both a mother and a writer, and so far it’s as “bizarre, and confusing, and stressful” as Chung anticipates. Yet it’s also wonderful, enlightening, and, so far, good for my identity as a writer.

I’m curious to hear how others answer these questions in their own lives. The comments on Chung’s essay are a good place to start:

Is your work your life, or do you need or desire a life beyond writing?

Is it true, as Chung says, that “making art is selfish”?