Audience feedback

I read my unillustrated, unpublished story to 200 children and here's what happened...

I recently finished a children’s story that I’ve been tinkering with for the past two years. It is inspired by a breathing relaxation activity I used to do (and sometimes still do) with my kids at bedtime to help them settle down. I applied many helpful writing techniques that I had learned in an online course by Julia Donaldson on children’s picture book writing. I continued to work on it and eventually I felt that I could call it a ‘story’. But I realised I needed some unbiased target audience feedback so I plucked up the courage to ask the infant school where my kids attend whether I could come in and read it to them.

Now, although it’s a short story, reading an unillustrated text is a big ask for children ages 3-7. But I felt it would be the perfect ‘stress test’ to see if the ideas resonate and the message is received. I asked the teachers if the children could draw a picture afterwards to show me what they liked most about the story - it was incredibly insightful!

Here’s how it went

So I took some props - which were a big hit and got a lot of questions.

I made a little note for each child with a balloon attached. 200 times was a labour of love :)

The children were absolute darlings.

Here is a sample of some of the drawings

My key takeaways

• Children are mesmerized by balloons and deeply understand the concept of losing a balloon and watching it float away.

• Children very easily understand that there is an ‘awake’ world and a ‘dream’ world.

• Children liked the idea of imaging a balloon shape and type that they’ve never seen before.

• Children love a good rhyme

• Children want to believe that the story was not all a dream

• Children are incredibly imaginative and respond well to being invited on a creative journey