Write a Children's Book — Why?

It was a dark time and death was rattling around like a lost messenger.One of my children was sick, undiagnosed, untreatable and getting worse. Young and feeling his life stripping away, he became intermittently suicidal. His desperate4 calls — at all hours — were sometimes terrorizing.I took refuge in my friend's office, his dining room, his country house; I was filling time by writing. One book—a compendium of case reports from the picaresque, the bleakest edges of madness. But substituting those dark stories for my son's only drained whatever composure, whatever attempt at fortitude was feeding me.My friend David, then a graphic designer mired in work he had outgrown, had begun tinkering with comic illustrations. One day, catching me in full groan and whimper, he grabbed me by my shoulders and said, "Why don't you write a children's book and I'll illustrate it!"Together we scanned the children's book section of the local Barnes & Noble. We decided, with little rational forethought, that a book for younger children might fit our plan. But what plan?I thought back to what books I liked as a child and what books my sons liked. Being a psychiatrist I thought, too, about stages of child development. I first settled on the idea of the self. Identity formation begins very early, even before language fully emerges. The idea of self is a complex fabrication of personal, familial and social experiences. 

Would a book that focuses on the self appeal to children?

.While our sense of self is always embedded in present circumstance, a child's self leans forward. Childhood is like a cocoon of the self, the larva, that will eventually emerge fully (almost) formed.But who writes children's books about a child's self, about identity development?There are children's books about coping with self-esteem (low), autism, ADHD, divorced parents...And there are children's books about surviving being fat, being ego-centric, having an overprotective dad, and coping with a bully.Would a book that focuses on the self appeal to children? Would they "get" it. Only, it seemed to me, if the story was about some conflict, some struggle that a child could appreciate.All this cogitating brought me to consider what kind of character would fit a story about a search for an identity. I suppose inspiration interposed itself here. I thought of some classically bad creature that would seek a radical change in its identity. The list is not exhaustive: gorgon, minotaur, sasquatch, vampire, werewolf, dragon.Dragons are popular. And they populate numerous children's books. But most of these dragons, like dinosaurs,  have undergone the Disney touch: they come out cute, harmless, guileless, even loveable.The history of dragons is far more gruesome. They appear in various forms—snake-like, lizard-like, even dinosaur-like. And all through that history they always appear in conflict with humans. They have fierce battles with heroes who vanquish them to seize a treasure or save a maiden.Dragons are equipped like animated war machines. they can exhale a firestorm; they can fly; and they have claws as vicious as a lion, jaws as strong as a crocodile, teeth as sharp as a shark, and a slithering body as whiplike as a snake. A formidable monster.Perhaps it's the background of ferocity that creates the reversal of type, the ultimate taming of the monster into the cutie-pie dragons that children could cuddle with.But, working from a foundation in personality development and identity-formation, I was intrigued by the possibility of creating a dragon character that, aware of its bad name and bad past behavior, decides to undergo a radical change.And the inspiration for that change would come from some reconciliation with present conditions, present-day life. My dragon would recognize that the very idea of a monster dragon is now ridiculous. Dragons as fearsome monsters is an extinct fear.Irrelevant.But the idea of a dragon is not forgotten. It lives on. It still breathes.Now facing me was the task of putting my dragon into the mindset of a child.If I were a child dragon, how would I think about myself? Would I want to change? How would I feel being this fierce monster in today's world?A radical change. That's what I would want. Dragons are surely brave. It would take courage to change, to become my own opposite. To become a good dragon.And I did it. I named him Panzil.