How to Use Adventures with Your Kids or Grandkids to Create a Storytelling Writing Canvas

Adventures in the Heart of Children's Book Authors

Creating a Storyteller's Writing Canvas

I hope you will enjoy this podcast with my oldest grandson, Leland.

Sharing my grandkids' involvement in helping to write and narrate children's books shows readers and authors how fertile and creative our children or grandchildren can be.

These stories are very visual, and we use them as a guide to share with our illustrator to create incredible drawings as part of our children's picture books.

Sitting down and interviewing your children or grandchildren captures a moment in time and a time capsule treasure you can unearth through the years.

I love Leland's perspective on his time in the Canadian Rocky Mountains; he never considered his time there as a way to become a storyteller or narrator.

Interviewing Leland gives you, as a children's book reader or author, some insight from someone closer to the age of the children our books are written for.

I am fortunate to live in the same city as Leland and hang out with him often.

The neat thing about interviewing Leland as a children's book author and narrator is that I have known my grandson all of his life, and today's interview revealed some fun insights I had never heard from hi before. Leland perceived things a little differently than what I thought he was thinking.

I am always amazed by the small details he remembers and how small things stick with him, even after several years.

Leland is narrating several of our Children's Stories and will participate in our Storyteller's Reading Circle Level on our website, kaboosetherockymountainbear.com.

Leland references many memories, including the Lunch Bucket Man. The Lunch Bucket Man is a statue dedicated to the coal miners whose blood, sweat, and tears helped establish the town of Canmore.

Canmore was a coal mining town, and the industry shut down in 1979. To pay homage to its history, Canmore erected a coal miner statue.

I also thought of the lunch bucket man as the coal miner, but the lunch bucket that the coal miner carried stuck with Leland.

The town of Canmore, which we reference in the podcast, inspired the setting of our birthplace of Kaboose, the town of Big Head.

As a children's book reader or author, you can see how preconceptions can lead you down a different writing path. These perceived differences can lay the foundation for all kinds of fun-filled stories.

The next time you get a chance with your child or grandchild, talk to them about something you did together and get their observations on this event; there are childhood treasures in those moments, so take time to unlock them.

Enjoy my conversations with Leland and his many times in Canmore, Banff, and the Bow Valley.

Mentioned in this episode:

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Bailey Introduction to Adventures in the Heart of Children's Book Authors