Reading my book to kids for the first time

Will they like it?

One thing I recently did was get a spiral-bound version of my book printed at FedEx so I could read it to a focus group... basically a bunch of my son's friends :)

What I was looking for was how the kids would respond to the book.

There is an important technique being taught in the book on how to manage tantrums and meltdowns but it had to be wrapped into a story that was engaging.

I thought the story was good but I wanted to test it by reading it to some kids.

Would they be interested in the story itself?

Would they get the idea being taught?

Would they be engaged?

So when I read the story out loud to them, here's what we discovered.

1) There were some pages that needed to be deleted. I loved the design on those pages but we realized they weren't necessary for the story. This was surprisingly hard for me to do but my wife and I realized the best thing to do nonetheless.

2) We were happy that the kiddos were engaged the entire time and participated in the way we envisioned them, so this was truly exciting. The book is written in a way that the reader has to engage with the story. It was awesome the kids did this how we envisioned without our prompting!

3) Reading the book out loud to kids made us realize some of the sentences were a bit clunky and still needed editing. We were amazed that even though we read the script a thousand times, read it aloud to ourselves a thousand times, there was something different about reading it aloud to actual children that made us realize the script still needed to be revised.

We specifically noticed some sentences felt like we were getting me tongue-tied when I read it, and we needed to clean it up so the adult reading the book has a smooth reading experience.

So ultimately this focus group was hugely helpful and if you ever write a children's book, I encourage you not to assume your story is good but to test it out too. Honestly, anything you do, you should test to know if it's good.

The book is getting so close to being finally ready to launch, we are so excited. Thank you to everyone who has pre-ordered the book so far (and a special shout out to those of you who have pre-ordered multiple books!) I promise you the story will be worth the book itself but the strategy learned in it will be game-changing.

You can pre-order a copy at www.PurplePenguinBook.com

Please follow the journey of my wife and I publishing our first children's book by following the hashtag #whoisthepurplepenguin