Why Would an Adult Read Children's Books

Budding painters copy great works of art. Aspiring olympians emulate the regimen of gold medalists. Mathematic students recalculate centuries old proofs. 

Writers read.

My historical novel, Wizard Clip Haunting (WCH), was written for adults and mature teens. But it was long—too long for most—372,000 words. I argued it was shorter than Gone with the Wind (392K), The Road to Reality (490K words), or Atlas Shrugged (690K), but that didn't matter. The new edition from Defiance Press will be a trilogy, the three averaging 126K. Yet, in the age of Twitter (now X) it appears that anything longer than 280 characters is going to be a challenge.

Barnes &  Noble Novi, MI (1/3 of the Young Readers section.)

Another challenge caught my attention: Can Wizard Clip Haunting be told to children? The director of a children's museum in the vicinity of the historic events asked me that. Sure, I said recklessly.  

The local Barnes and Nobel introduced me to the hundreds (okay, thousands) of books for "Young Readers"ages 8-12. 

What was most popular I asked? The clerk led me to the long shelf of the Goosebumps series. I had heard of that, but 300 million printed? I didn't know kids read that much. 

Okay so WCH is about ghosts (thus Goosebumps), but it's also about American History, at least the events in the 1780-1790 era, EarlyAmerica. I was directed to another collection of best selling American History books for Young Readers, the Rush Revere series.

These two successful Young Readers series couldn't be much different. The Goosebumps books (genre: horror & adventure) are 5" x 7.5" x 0.375", paperback, weigh in at 4 oz, printed on ground-wood stock, contain no illustrations, and are about 15K words.  The Rush Revere books (genre: history & humor) are 6" x 8.5" x 0.75", hard cover, weight in a 1 lb, 4 oz, printed on heavy glossy stock, contain many full page color illustrations, and are just under 40K words.  

Yes,  you're guessing right. I've not only committed to writing a Young Readers edition of WCH—15K to 20K with B&W illustrations but also to a pre-school version—2K words with color illustrations perhaps like these:

A close friend who is responsible for getting me into this rabbit hole (hint: he used to do root canals), has already drafted a poetic, 1000 word pre-school reader for the latter. 

Now, all l've got to do is read these source books, learn to think like a kid, and after reading...write, write, write.

Any suggestions? I'm going to need them. Please comment below.

Stan