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Make Your Own Storybooks

Homemade comic books:

Take a regular sheet of paper, turn it so it’s in landscape, and draw two lines to divide it into 4 boxes. Now you have a “comic book” with 4 panes.  Invite your child to draw pictures that tell a story, then tell you the story.  If your child stalls for a minute, you can ask “what happens next?”  or make a suggestion.  But don’t take over.  Your job is to write down your child’s words, and then read them back. You are the “secretary” and your child is the “author.”  Once you have a few of these pages, you can staple them together to make a book. Go to the library and check out books of Peanuts comics, for inspiration.

Make Your Own Book:

Take a sheet of regular paper, and fold it in half, then in half again. Now you have a small “book” with 4 pages.  With 4 pages your child can tell you a beginning, a couple of middles, and then an end.  Add as many pages as you want.

Stories without Pages:

Here are a few story starters. By all means, change these, or make up your own.  Stop now and then to invite your child to add to the story.

• A long time ago, there lived a little boy/girl, named ____ who was very poor.  She lived in a little house, that had only one room.  She lived with …
• Once there was a boy/girl named ___ who had a special dog.  All she had to do was ask her dog for something, and that thing would appear.  One day, the girl was feeling a little bored, so she said to her dog, “please bring me a _______.”  And the next thing you know, ______
• Make up three talking animals, and have them go on a quest, to get something important. They’ll have to face obstacles, and cooperate to get over them.
• Or, tell a story from your own childhood.  An adventure you had, or thought about having. Children just love hearing about their parents’ growing up.

[this page was last updated by Robert Needlman, on 11-25-2018]