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Who needs to make up a story when you can find so many true stories out there simply waiting for you to transform them into a children’s book? (See examples of true stories in Figure 3-3.)

a) Boardwalk Babies. Text copyright © 2021, Marissa Moss. Illustrations copyright © 2021 April Chu. Reprinted by permission. b) A Queen to the Rescue. Text copyright © 2021 Nancy Churnin. Illustrations copyright © 2021 Yevgenia Nayberg. Reprinted by permission.

FIGURE 3-3: Example true stories.

One real-life subject that all children seem to gravitate toward is true stories about animals. One successful example is Owen & Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship, by Isabella Hatkoff and Craig Hatkoff (Scholastic Press), about a baby hippo and a 130-year-old giant tortoise who adopt each other after a tragedy leaves the baby hippo orphaned.

If you narrow down the category of animals to dogs, cats, and other domesticated beasts (who have a lot in common with children, after all), you have another potentially winning formula. A moving example is Marshall the Miracle Dog, written by Cynthia Willenbrock and illustrated by Lauren Heimbaugh (The Marshal Movement), which relates the story of a horribly mistreated and disfigured dog who, against the odds, finds a loving forever home.

Many new writers swear they have an incredible tale, stranger than fiction and 12 times more lovely. Great! Go ahead and write it. Just beware that all the rules of writing good children’s books apply to real stories just as much as they do to fictional ones.