When children co-create a book, they build their:
Confidence: as thinkers, writers, readers, creators, authors, in their identity/ies.
Children build confidence as they come to see themselves as writers and artists. When children see their worlds in a published children’s book, this visibility can validate their unique ideas and experiences, and lead to increased self esteem, confidence and a sense of pride.
Creativity: curiosity, experimentation, critical thinking, exploration.
Collaborating with artists and writers on a creative publishing process builds children’s critical thinking skills, curiosity, reflexivity, and social and emotional intelligence.
Connection: increased sense of belonging and connection with adults, peers, family, community.
Creating and sharing a book with peers, family and community can build meaningful social connections through a rich, creative, enjoyable experience.
Additional benefits of our work
Our work benefits adults in the child’s ecosystem – carers, teachers, adults, families, community members.
Adults and children make a book together, as collaborators. This activity can strengthen relationships between adult and child, and continues to strengthen relationships when the child reads the published book together with friends, family and community.
Our work benefits communities
The positive impact of the picture books reaches further than lives of the young authors. It benefits their communities, who see their own realities reflected in books as a valued part of a dynamic and connected cultural landscape.
Our work benefits society
We believe that publishing books by kids elevates the perspectives of children and values their contribution as fundamental to our understanding of the world.
Books co-created by children are a record of a moment in time. Through the published books, children’s understandings of their lives are valued as cultural records of significance for current and future generations.
Our work benefits readers
At Kids’ Own Publishing we believe that listening to divergent, unapologetic, raw, unfiltered, hilarious, direct, profound and infinitely imaginative voice of children can engage, challenge and entertain both adults and children.
There is potential for readers to experience a sense of being ‘seen’, as they relate to the diversity of worlds reflected in the books.
Our work benefits children’s literature
Most children’s books are written and illustrated by adults for children. By adopting the philosophy of co-creation, our books are as diverse and imaginative as the children and communities that make them.
This diversity adds to the richness of children’s literature, and challenges us to rethink what children’s literature could be.
Our Commitment to Research
To clearly understand the impact of our community-based work, we partner with academics publishing cutting-edge research into language and literacies. By researching with communities, they seek to understand the vibrancy and complexity of languages and meaning making in the lives of children and their families. The researchers are examining what it means for the creators to share their languages, funds of knowledge, and identities in books. The researchers are investigating our arts-rich approaches to advance understandings of multimodal and multilingual pedagogies for literacy learning, and scholarly understandings of Australian migration history, society and culture.
Our research partners are:
- Dr Mary Tomsic, Research Fellow, Research Centre for Refugees, Migration and Humanitarian Studies, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, ACU
- Dr Anh Nguyen Austen, Research Fellow, Research Centre for Refugees, Migration and Humanitarian Studies, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, ACU
- Associate Professor Julie Choi, Associate Professor, Additional Languages, Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne
- Dr Rafaela Cleeve Gerkens, Lecturer in Language and Literacy and Arts Education, Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne
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Kids’ Own Publishing is a not-for-profit arts organisation. Please consider donating to strengthen our ability to deliver creative arts and publishing projects. Kids’ Own Publishing uses creativity and community publishing to increase children’s and young people’s sense of identity, connection and belonging in the wider community.