Creating characters kids will love

the long version

This is a gem of a book filled with all sorts of useful information about creating characters that goes beyond creating them for children's books and encompasses information that will help anyone who wants to explore character creation for any type of fiction - novels, drama, short stories etc. Elaine Marie Alphin has a straightforward, no nonsense style of prose that is easy to understand and she has filled the book with useful exercises on each aspect of character creation and lists of examples from books if the reader wants to examine how the masters do it. Often I find that writing books filled with exercises use the exercises to pad out the prose rather than as helpful tools but this book doesn't do that. The exercises are directly related to the topic in each chapter and provide a useful exploration of the topics as they are covered. Highly recommended.