How to Write a Children’s Book:

Joshua Krautmann
Nov 2 · 7 min read

The respectable way to exploit minors.

A Very Unemployable Child

So you’ve finished your shift at the Denny’s off the interstate in Topeka. You’re cleaning the bathroom stalls on a payday, and are waiting patiently for the burdensome workday to just end. This past week totaled 26.2 hours. Your rapidly beating heart was set on rackin’ up 113 hours this week, because — let’s be honest — meth is a hell of a drug. Your hours are always less than thirty-five because the corporation doesn’t want to pay for any dental benefits… even for the mere six teeth you have left.

So the direct-deposit goes through. You realize you can’t even afford diapers this week.

“Damn, I really wish my mother had potty-trained me.”

You, like most employees in the service industry, deserve a higher wage. After all, scrubbing other people’s carelessly sprayed, squirted and spattered fluids (and semi-solids) off of lavatory surfaces, is a great deal more heroic than fire-fighting. Most of the time, the only smoke those “heroes” tend to see is coming off a rack of ribs. Anyhow, all week you’ve busted your ass. The only breaks you have taken are to stop and earnestly ponder, “How does diarrhea even end up on a ceiling?!”

Sound familiar America?

Yeah, I thought so.

If you are like most mild-to-moderately impoverished Americans, you would enjoy finding an easy way to fatten the ‘ole pocketbook. Many people have concluded that rearing your own child is a financial liability — but exploiting other people’s kids is very lucrative!

So why not write a Children’s Book?!

Many before you have done it; and as long as the world’s elite don’t cull the human population down by 85% — a very large demographic market for your potential product will still exist.

I have created this guide, chock full of information and useful suggestions to help you get started on your (dare I say, heroic?) endeavor. Soon enough you’ll be able to afford that yacht you’ve been eyeing up at Jeffrey Epstein’s seized- property auction.


1. ) Your Skill-Level Requirements? …Juuuust Above Zero.

Assuming you have, at minimum, the communication skills of a Paleolithic human after suffering a massive brain aneurysm, you should be able to get this book started. Although, it may be best if your vocabulary is limited to only one to two syllable words for young children to mentally grasp. They can wait until they start school to learn things like multi-syllable words and syntax. After all, that’s why teachers get paid the big bucks. So for now, try banging your temple against a steel girder until “words” such as dada, mama, bow-wow and poopoo start rolling off your tongue. (Take pride in your new-found verbiage, because you can now write a Lil Jon song… YAYAH!) Make sure to write these ideas down quickly; your awareness of these utterances may be fleeting.

2. ) Remember, you can do this!

If you are unaware, just keep in mind — kids are pretty dumb. I mean, some eight year-olds are only reading at a third-grade level! (They are also fairly lazy: “Daddy, daddy, read me a bedtime story!” — and now that I think of it, very demanding as well.) Because of a youngster’s ease of entertainment, writing a kid’s book is a very attainable goal. As far as easy amusement is concerned; I once put a pair of sunglasses on my dog’s ass, and my nephew stared with delight for no less than forty minutes.

3. ) Let “Abstract Art” be your illustration inspiration.

Picasso made a fairly decent living from two dimensional doodle-like scrawls of ladies with inhuman eye proportions. So, I am sure any drawings you can hastily slap together for a child’s undivided attention would be sufficient. And we all know, mediocrity is what makes the big bucks! An expensive Jackson Pollack painting looks like what you cleaned out of the toilet at Denny’s, a Picasso can sell for $106.5 million, and Nikola Tesla — well he died broke.

4. ) Your target consumers are actually the parents.

Small children usually do not have gainful employment. (I told you… lazy.) If you don’t understand what that means — it means their parents will be purchasing your book. As a result, I would use methods to entice adults and leave them satisfied with their purchase. Trying to secure a cross-promotion with a company such as Anheuser-Busch would be a great idea. How about including a coupon for a free 12-pack of Stella Artois with every book? There is nothing better than the satisfaction of reading to your beloved offspring… except doing it while piss drunk, holding one eye closed to prevent double vision! “Mommy is always swaying back and forth when she reads our bedtime stories!”

Another idea and potential revenue stream may be a product advertisement integration. A lot of parents enjoy browsing through catalogs for things like furniture. If one can casually shop while reading to their unemployed toddlers, this can be a win-win situation. Imagine seeing a depiction of a family of friendly talking grizzly bears sitting around your soon-to-be dinette. Since you have kids, to make the scene more realistic, you can see it next to a crayon-marked wall, grape drink-stained rug and irreparably scratched armoire. By combining an easy online order form and beer coupons, they are sure to get plenty of impulse furniture purchases!

5. ) Do your research

One mistake I had recently made while writing my first children’s book entitled, “Chocolate milk Comes from Brown Cows”, was not fact checking my claims. Only after a careful inquiry and further investigation, it turns out a cow does not have the appropriate verbal skills to articulate a “moo”.

6. ) Promptly Become a Celebrity and/or World-Renown Public Figure

For some reason, a lot of folks see this as being an immovable obstacle. Well start moving! Being a celebrity is the most effective way to boost the sales of your book and— like the descriptive phrase that your mother somehow relates to jumping off a bridge — “Everybody’s doing it!”

Jimmy Fallon, Queen Latifah, Madonna, Octavia Spencer, and Jay Leno to name a few, all have “written” children’s books. Well, let’s just say their names are displayed prominently on the cover of children’s books. Assuming you have taken my advice, you can now utilize your recently acquired prestige. Kick back a little and let your recognizable name do most of the work. Why complicate things with a candid and exhaustive biography, when you can do a cash grab in thirty-or-so pages? Keep it simple by using an existing fairy tale template like Snow White. Now change the character names, replace “dwarve” for “little person”, add some reference to TikTok (or whatever app these kids are using) and BOOM, you’re done! The check is already in the mail.

If you haven’t found a few spare moments to achieve international acclaim, then…

7. ) Invent a creative pen name

Dr. Seuss did not hold an actual PhD. (Neither did Mr. Pepper — who was not a Sgt. either.) As legend has it, his title derived from what his father had hoped he would become, and “Seuss” was mother’s maiden name. (This has inspired me to write under the moniker: Just Please, Anything-But-a-Crackhead Levine.) Whether or not the name origin of Dr. Seuss is true, he was wildly successful due in part to his easily remembered and slightly enigmatic pen name. Plus, we all know how much children just love going to the doctor.

and last but not least…

8. ) Always Inject Your Divisive Ideologies Into the Story!

In our culture, children have been innocent and impartial for way too long. They are never too young to start seeing the world through the lenses of their ideology and hate one another for their opposing system of beliefs. It’s called preparing for the “real world”, where apparently there are only two sides to all seemingly complex issues. Let’s get some more political squabbles in the sandbox!

“Miss Weaver! He squirted apple juice on my MAGA hat!”

“Well, she used the wrong gender pronoun!”

“What the hell is a pronoun?”

“I don’t know, I am fucking five years old!... all I know is I should be angry!”

“Me too!”

With this technique you may be alienating certain readers; but the more explicit the opinions are, the more fervent the support. A niche viewpoint generates a very loyal fan base.

Some great topics to overtly or surreptitiously infuse into your story, that are sure to get ’em talkin’:

Abortion, free speech, transgender rights or lack thereof, political-correctness, political-INcorrectness, flags used in the Civil War, circumcision, or anything (I mean ANYTHING) relating to race.

…and remember, it’s not propaganda if you are right!


Due to my comprehensive guide, you should know everything there is to know about writing Children’s Literature. So have fun with it! There is no pressure — you are just shaping the young and impressionable minds that will ultimately determine the fate of the world.


(Editor’s Note: The author has no experience in the fictional-literature industry, the nonfiction-literature industry, or raising a child. But he has at one time been a child, and most likely — to the best of our knowledge — has finished a book.)

(Note from the Author to the Editor: I don’t like your tone. Finishing a book in the Goosebumps Series does count. Fuck you Joel.)

(A Note back to the Author from the Editor: — Fuck me? No fuck you! Maybe you would finish a book in the adult section if you sobered up for an hour or two… and if you ever talk to my wife life like that again, I’ll kill you.)

Thanks for reading!

Joshua Krautmann

Written by

Humorous autodidactic litterateur… who likes to use a thesaurus.

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