The beginning of an annotated bibliography

Experiment 2: Children's Book

Rudolph, Shaina, et al. All My Stripes: a story for children with autism. Magination Press, American Psychological Association, 2015.

All My Stripes is a children’s book about a Zebra named Zane who feels left out and gets bullied in class because his classmates only ever see his ‘autism stripe.’ After explaining each instance of feeling bad about himself to his mom, Zane’s mother explains that Zane has lots of stripes that make up who he is, like his ‘pilot stripe,’ his ‘honesty stripe,’ and his ‘curiosity stripe.’ After learning that his autism stripe doesn’t define him, Zane feels much better and more confident about who he is. This book also includes a brief reading guide in the back that links each event to Autism Spectrum Disorder.

This book is one of my favorite children’s books. I was recently introduced to it while I was babysitting a typically developing child. I loved that the family owned and read this book even though they didn’t have immediate family members with autism, because I know that it is vital to be teaching children acceptance of differences, especially when those differences are cognitive disabilities like autism. Reading this book inspired me greatly to pursue a path that encourages kids to love who they are. I think it was the first of many stepping stones in my life that brought me to where I am today. When I started writing my own children’s book, I reflected on the theme of acceptance and self-love in this book, and worked to create a similar tone throughout my experiment. Although the plots and messages of the books are different, the inspiration I took from All My Stripes brought my book into existence, along with my attitude on autism today.

Buccieri, Lisa, and Peter Economy. “Writing Children's Books For Dummies Cheat Sheet.” Dummies, Wiley,

www.dummies.com/education/language-arts/writing-childrens-books-for-dummies-cheat-sheet/.

This website, marketed specifically for ‘dummies,’ provides a holistic lesson for how to write a children’s book from top to bottom. Its various headings include Tips for Editing your Children’s Book, Tips for Writing Books for Younger Children, What Not to Do when Writing Children’s Books, and Age Levels for Children’s books. Under each heading is a bulleted list that explains handy insights for anyone creating a children’s book that doesn’t know where to begin.

As a novice children’s book author, this website was incredibly helpful. I definitely would consider myself a ‘dummy’ when it comes to knowing how to create a children’s book, so I relied on this site to inform my decisions regarding various aspects of my book. For example, one of the tips is to “Watch excessive use of adjectives, adverbs, and long descriptive passages.” This tip reminded me how young and simple the minds of the students in the audience actually are, so I changed my descriptive ‘said’ synonyms back to their most simple form. I especially liked the section for younger readers, because my book is directed towards students with less developed minds. One of the tips in this section explained the Extremes Rule, which says that ‘the world is black or white, not both — most children ages 10 and under can be quite literal.’ While at first I was struggling with the unrealistic idea of a child eating only red food ever, reading this rule helped me understand that I need this yes-to-red-food, no-to-other-colors attitude to explain the world in which the character is living.