The more I watch and observe, the more I learn, the more respect I give to babies and young children – to all young people (that goes without saying). When I worked in publishing I knew no one who had children and subsequently learned to use my editors, art directors and sales people as my primary audience, closely followed by reviewers and librarians, then teachers, the parents, than finally children. The food chain was very long and for something called children’s books quite unbelievably lob-sided.
Similarly, my wife and I read much about the state of a baby’s mind while waiting for the arrival of our daughter and learned a great deal which was absorbed and suppressed by our excitement so much so that I only realised a year ago that it had actually sunk in. This comes some four years after the fact and luckily coincides with a new found streak of creative energy that is very exciting to yours truly.
I am searching for the answer to the title of this post and hopefully won’t rest until I’ve found it, or at least made sense of it so much that a baby or toddler would look at the result and say ‘Well done old man!’ (I wouldn’t know it if they did)
Then perhaps the audience will be able to move a little up the food chain.