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Character Storming… How Important are The Characters for any Children’s Book?

Characters are the life of a book which are actually assisting the author in narrating the story. Kids get influenced by the characters so it becomes really important for the author to develop the story and lesson around those characters so that it has a positive impact on the kids. Characters’ life in a story is the author’s imagination going inside the reader’s brain when reading. Characters can be animals, humans, ghosts, superhumans or aliens etc. But they become memorable. They are the ones whom you love, hate, feel sorry for, respect, like, dislike but you surely have some emotion for them when reading the story. The most loved characters are often used in various book sequels and they pull their readers and sales only because those characters were loved in the earlier book.

When creating a character for your book, an author must first shortlist on its specie type, age and appearance and then note down the other attributes which the character should possess. As an author you should know the character completely, inside-out. Think unique and come out with unique characters. It should be distinctive. Once the author has laid out the character in words completely, it is equally important for the illustrator to portray him with the same details in his illustrations. His facial features, health, hair, clothing etc all will remain in the minds of the readers.

Kids also love getting reflections of themselves in the stories and the illustrations. They tend to identify themselves with the characters in the book who are their age or if same ethnicity. So, making books with multicultural kids, different ethnicities, backgrounds and faith is a very good idea to cater to the world audience. For example, story of 3 friends who are Caucasian, African and Japanese and then adding various cultural attributes of all the 3 in the book can be really interesting for readers. It will not just let kids know about various cultures but will also help them relate to the characters based on their own ethnicity. It will also assist towards global peace and minimizing the gaps and differences between various cultures. We live in a community which is mixed so all authors must keep this in mind when developing their story characters. Kids do dream of larger than life characters. So, it is also a good idea to have superheroes from various cultures.