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The most skilled writers disguise learning in the most elegant manner so that the reader doesn’t even know they’re learning. You mostly find the learning/educational genre in board books, picture books, early readers, coloring and activity books, and middle-grade nonfiction.

Workbooks, subject-based readers, leveled readers, and supplementary school materials fill up stacks and stacks of shelves in most chain bookstores, so if you have an educational or teaching background and are a good storyteller, you can likely find work writing for children. Figure 3-16 shows two examples of nonfiction educational books.

From How to Change the World in 12 Easy Steps, published with permission of Tanglewood Books. Author © 2021 Peggy Porter Tierney. Illustrator © 2021 Marie Letourneau.

FIGURE 3-15: How to Change the World in 12 Easy Steps.

a) Animated Science: The Periodic Table reprinted with permission of the illustrator © 2021 Shiho Pate. Text © 2021 John Fandon. b) Planet Ocean: Why We All Need a Healthy Ocean written by Patricia Newman. Photographs by Annie Crawley. Text copyright © 2021 by Patricia Newman. Photographs copyright © 2021 Annie Crawley. Reprinted with the permission of Millbrook Press, an imprint of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

FIGURE 3-16: Example nonfiction educational books.

Historical-figure biographies, activity books, and how-to books all fall into this genre. You can also find issue-based books on puberty, sex, divorce, race, adoption, understanding the LGBTQIA community, and all the cultural hot-button issues of the day for children and teens. (Although a lot of fiction also covers these topics.)

For the younger set, What Makes a Baby, by Cory Silverberg, illustrated by Fiona Smyth (Triangle Square), can help introduce conception, as can It’s Not the Stork: A Book about Girls, Boys, Babies, Bodies, Families, and Friends, by Robie H. Harris, illustrated by Michael Emberley (Candlewick).

American Girl Publications has a few great entries that deal with puberty, such as The Care & Keeping of You: The Body Book for Girls, by Valorie Lee Schaefer, and Help! The Absolutely Indispensable Guide to Life for Girls, by Nancy Holyoke (both Pleasant Company Publications). Or try From Boys to Men: All About Adolescence and You, by Michael Gurian and Brian Floca (Price Stern Sloan).

Educational books for children aren’t limited to sex education. The environment is on everyone’s minds these days (refer to Figure 3-16), so kids want to explore the subject that everyone is talking about. You can write an educational book about any topic imaginable. You just need an interest in a topic and a zest for making facts as interesting and fun as possible so that you don’t lose your reader’s attention.

New writers often make the mistake of belittling the intelligence of their audience by talking down to them or preaching at them. No matter what you aim to teach your readers, make sure you keep the tone fun and the material interesting. You have to convey what you, as an author, think or expect through the information you relate and not through expressed opinions.

The publisher Treasure Bay developed a category in leveled reading called the We Both Read series (developed for the educational market but available in the mass market). In these books (shown in Figure 3-17), one page contains more elevated language for the parent to read aloud while the opposite page gives the child appropriate-leveled language to read themselves. With titles in both fiction and nonfiction, these books encourage both learning to read and parent-child interaction. We think the series provides a pretty remarkable way for parents and kids to bond over reading and books.

Reprinted courtesy of Treasure Bay, Inc.

FIGURE 3-17: The We Both Read series.