How I came to make a children's book about poo :)

It's almost ready to publish

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I want this Substack to be a space where I can show all sides of me. Sometimes that means you will get to experience the little boy version of Courtney Ball. And that includes a book about poop.

How did this come to be?

Several years ago, I was involved in the local Cedar Rapids chapter of the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. At that time, I wasn’t particularly interested in writing children’s literature, but it was the most professional writing group in the area, so I went to the meetings and soaked up as much knowledge as I could.

During the time I attended, I was always, as far as I knew, the only male present in our meetings. One day, I remember a discussion about why men are so overrepresented in published books for children when most writers for juvenile readers are female. I believe the conversation was in response to a report released by VIDA.¹

The main question was, when most kid lit authors are female—like in the group I attended, men make up a tiny fraction of all children’s book writers—why, then, do men make up roughly half of award-winning published authors? Even in an industry in which the vast majority of authors, agents, publishers, and even customers are female, men (especially White cis men) are still vastly overrepresented.

During that conversation, a lot of possible answers were offered up. It was a very similar discussion to that described in this article by Emma Walton Hamilton. Perhaps they were holding back their real opinions because I was there, but I was a little surprised that they didn’t talk much about patriarchy.

I’m sure my friend Lyz Lenz, herself an amazing, published writer, would have a few things to say about this. And she would not pull any punches just to make a man more comfortable. (I’ll make sure to ask her if she has any thoughts on this.)

I suspect that a big part of the answer comes down to the fact that we live in a society that has been controlled by men for a very long time, and even if an industry is made up mostly of women, it’s still hard to fight against the overarching system of patriarchy.

Okay, time for a confession.

I want you to know that I listened to that conversation. I heard the frustration expressed about the unfairness of unequal representation. It’s important to me to hear various women’s perspectives. Over the years I’ve learned a lot from listening to non-male perspectives— especially from my wife and daughters. They have exposed blind spots and biases I didn’t even know to look for. And I am by no means done learning. So, while these authors and illustrators (all of whom were more experienced than me) spoke, I paid attention to what they were saying.

BUT, I have to admit that during the discussion, I also thought, “Hmm, maybe I could write a children’s book.” 😬

I can’t remember how it came up, but while I listened to their conversation, one woman said something like, “Men are more willing to do bathroom humor, like gross stuff that boys like.” Reflecting on that sentence afterwards, my brain started churning.

I wanted to be a serious writer. I mean, I am a serious writer, right? But I could definitely write a children’s book about poop. So, I did!

I’ve never had a book published. The one time I tried, it was a serious book I had written about a subject I was intimately familiar with, and everyone who read it said it was a great read. I even had a friend in publishing who would have been in a position to put my book out into the world. But he told me honestly that they would not publish it unless I had a larger existing audience. Not enough people knew about me for the book to make any money. It had nothing to do with the quality of my writing.

So, needless to say, I have not attempted to find a publisher for my book about poop. In fact, I wrote my first draft of this years ago, shared it with a few people for laughs, and then parked it in my Google Drive with other partially completed projects. But every once in a while I fall into a bit of despair when I think about all my unfinished creative ideas, and I decide I must commit to putting at least a few of them out into the world. (That’s how my film, The Bridge, finally became a reality after years of rattling around as a story in my brain.)

So, I hired my daughter’s friend, Lana Hadziosmanovic, to illustrate it and did a little research (and by “research”, I mean I read a couple articles that popped up in a Google search) about how self publishing works. It’s a very silly project, but I’m also very happy with how it’s turning out. Once it’s ready to go, I’ll share it with you, and then you can think about which children you know who have parents that you’d like to make squirm during bedtime stories.

Until then, I’ll leave you with this

1. As far as I can tell VIDA no longer exists.