4 ms·

It's not an expectation that a book will be a masterpiece of storytelling. Take the very hungry caterpillar, it has the simplest premise: -> Caterpillar eats f

by belval 4y ago

It's not an expectation that a book will be a masterpiece of storytelling. Take the very hungry caterpillar, it has the simplest premise: -> Caterpillar eats food -> Caterpillar eats more food -> Caterpillar eats even more food -> Caterpillar gets sick -> Caterpillar eats less food -> Butterfly. The succession of events have a thread that join them together. I'm pretty sure ChatGPT could write it as well if you give it the above summary, but the hedgehog story doesn't have that and feel uncanny because of it.

IshKebab 4y ago
Yeah but The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a good children's book. Maybe you don't have children but trust me there are plenty of bad children's books (especially now it's easy to self publish). Take a look at Penguin in Peril for example. Cats are hungry -> they go to see a film -> they are still hungry so they decide to steal a penguin -> the penguin escapes -> the penguin swims through a fountain back to the zoo -> the cats get put in prison. I dunno maybe it's still fairly coherent, but we've gone from "completely impossible" to "bad children's books" in like 2 years. How many more years do you think it will take to get to "good children's book"? I bet less than 10.
theRealMe 4y ago
As someone that has been reading multiple children’s books per day for the last 5 years to my children, let me tell you that some books are like what you describe with a nice intertwined story that makes sense together and then some other books feel like randomly thrown together scenes like this that are just “and then this happened… and then this happened…”. I tend to notice a lot of the latter come from either 1. Celebrities that decide they want to be children’s book authors, or 2. Somebody that wants to make cool pictures and adds the story as an afterthought. With how nice these pictures are for OP’s book, it would probably be tricked into thinking this book was written by person #2.

by belval 4y ago

IshKebab 4y ago

Yeah but The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a good children's book. Maybe you don't have children but trust me there are plenty of bad children's books (especially now it's easy to self publish). Take a look at Penguin in Peril for example. Cats are hungry -> they go to see a film -> they are still hungry so they decide to steal a penguin -> the penguin escapes -> the penguin swims through a fountain back to the zoo -> the cats get put in prison. I dunno maybe it's still fairly coherent, but we've gone from "completely impossible" to "bad children's books" in like 2 years. How many more years do you think it will take to get to "good children's book"? I bet less than 10.

theRealMe 4y ago

As someone that has been reading multiple children’s books per day for the last 5 years to my children, let me tell you that some books are like what you describe with a nice intertwined story that makes sense together and then some other books feel like randomly thrown together scenes like this that are just “and then this happened… and then this happened…”. I tend to notice a lot of the latter come from either 1. Celebrities that decide they want to be children’s book authors, or 2. Somebody that wants to make cool pictures and adds the story as an afterthought. With how nice these pictures are for OP’s book, it would probably be tricked into thinking this book was written by person #2.