Picture Book Making As An Empowering Creative Activity 

20 February 2026

As a children’s book writer and illustrator, I believe understanding and creating images and stories can be a very empowering activity in children’s education. As we read picture books, we find connection, knowledge and different ways of looking at the world. At the same time, the process of creating picture books fosters understanding, creativity, and critical thinking.

Reading picture books and helping children create their own stories through images and words can have enormous benefits in developing literacy, critical thinking, and creative confidence and agency. Everyone creates in different ways, but broadly speaking, we can break down the process into a few crucial steps.

Catching the First Ideas

Many picture book creators describe different points where an idea germinates, but my own process is often rooted in character development and visual imagery. I believe characters are the core of stories, and the relationships between the characters, whether they are between friends, siblings, or child-parent, or child-teacher, and the tensions that arise from them are often the engines that drives the narrative. The best characters are often those whom young readers can relate to and empathise with. They act as mirrors, reflecting ourselves and our relationships, and offering a space to explore and navigate complex emotions, motives, and decision-making.

Losing the Inhibition

This point is often where the first visual image appears, when we first imagine our protagonists. This is also when we come up with the first hurdle, when our worry about not knowing “how to draw” and the fear of the blank page takes hold.

This is a very common fear that many of us often face and it is completely normal. And the way of overcoming it is by doing. A very useful tool myself and many illustrators use is a series of timed creative drawing exercises, which are designed to warm us up and get us going. They include sitting in a circle and drawing with our eyes closed, drawing with our less dominant hand, drawing with only shapes or in a continuous line…etc. These exercises feel like play, where there is no judgement and no pressure to produce a “good” drawing. By making us all draw equally “badly”, it helps us lose the inhibition and value what is unique and imperfect with each of our drawings. These exercises were extremely fun, and at the end of it everyone feels relaxed and more confident, sharing and talking about each other’s drawings.

There is no bad drawing, when made with intention, every drawing contains its own way of telling a story. By playing and then looking at the drawings together we explore different ways of seeing and interpreting the world.

Creating the narrative

Once we have decided who our characters are, we need to come up with the narrative of our story. This usually involves a situation where something happens to the character.

What happens to them? How would my character react to the situation? How do they feel? Beneath the “what” question are the “why” questions, which involve motives and inner workings of the character. This is where interesting discussions can happen amongst children. What do you think your character would do? And why? Different voices start to emerge, a world of possibilities opens up, and we need to make judgments as to which action rings most true.

This is arguably the most exciting and interesting part of the process, where we meet our inner voices and desires, and interrogate the values and views we hold. Simple technique like storyboarding can help children visualise the story and explore the different scenarios.

Illustrations: Mei & Tiger Sketches, (c) Daishu Ma

The Fabric that Holds the Story

Often, when reading a picture book, we hurry to the start of the story, overlooking the rich visual world that surrounds it. It’s often fascinating that if we go back to picture books to intentionally look for these visual clues, in book covers, endpapers, title pages, and almost everyone was surprised by how much they previously overlooked, even with the books that they are very familiar with.

In the summer of 2025 I visited Itabashi Library in Tokyo, Japan, a library renowned for its extensive collection of picture books from around the world. I was most struck by a special shelf where picture books made by local school children were on display. These books were so well finished, printed and bound that you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart from the published books. They had all the elements that complete a book beyond the story itself, such as endpapers, title pages, as well as cleverly designed front and back covers. All of these elements not only give a beginning and an end of a book but also form part of the narrative, giving clues, contexts and additional visual information to help the reader along. They form the fabric that holds together the “world” of the story.

I think this is important because it helps readers understand every visual detail in a picture book is chosen, and nothing is there by accident. They, too, can use these tools to tell their own stories.

Creating Picture Books is An Empowering Act

Stories with pictures are not mysterious; they come from an intentional act of making. Anyone can create them. And each one can be made in many different ways to convey very different meanings.

The process of creating a picture book is democratic and empowering. It is a space where we develop tools and skills that help us think critically and make creative choices in our classrooms.

Daishu Ma is a Chinese author, illustrator, and graphic artist based in East London. Her first wordless graphic novel, Leaf, was published in 2014. Since then, she has created a range of picture books for children, including Tiger, It’s Snowing! and the board book series Ada’s World of Fun, published internationally. She also creates non-fiction books that make science accessible and engaging, reflecting her strong interest in science and nature.