The Importance of Storybook Writing

A family vacation. A day on the beach. Adventures with a favorite stuffed animal. A magical carpet ride to a mysterious and undiscovered land. Story writing transcribes a young learner’s vivid perspective in such astonishing ways that spoken words cannot. It facilitates self-expression by tapping into each child’s imagination and fusing it with creative language.

Story writing encourages children to engage in active and independent creative thinking. But it also teaches students how to employ logic and consider the methodical succession of events and situations within a story. Story writing promotes organization skills and rational thought processes. To take it a step further, events in a story can be completely restructured to convey a different theme, moral or point of view. For instance, the story of “Goldilocks and The Three Bears” follows a linear sequential timing of events. As an exercise, ask your child to retell the story from Goldilock’s perspective in first person narrative. The story structure may change completely into a series of flashbacks accompanied with present day self-reflection.

Benefits of story writing for children:

       Encourages independent thinking

       Fosters introspection and empathy, particularly through character design and development

       Improves focus and clarity

       Develops reading comprehension

       Expands skills in grammar, vocabulary and sentence structure

Thanks to new online software and media, many story writing programs that are entertaining and easy to use exist on the web today. Popular storybook creation sites offering limited personalization include Iseeme.com and Frecklebox.com. Some of these sites offer free story writing platforms for young learners, such as:

       Learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org

       Kidscom.com

       Sandboxlearning.com

       Littlewritebrain.com