Writing Board Books with Student-Parents from Generation Hope

Student parent authors with our inspiring Story Coaches and Illustrators, plus Shout Mouse Press & Generation Hope staff.

A powerful & inspiring weeklong workshop with student parents

For a full week in March, nine student-parent writers met daily at the True Reformer Building in D.C. to write books for our second Mini Mirrors series – books for toddlers that celebrate diverse families and experiences. These writers are all under 24 years old, and are scholars with Generation Hope, an inspiring organization that works with student parents to ensure they have the opportunities to succeed. 

Every day, the writers showed up to craft stories that celebrate their lived experiences – so that all kids can find themselves in the pages of a book. They worked together in three groups, and were supported by Story Coaches and Illustrators to make their ideas come to life. As they wrote, they grappled with questions like:

Who gets left out of the narrative?

What elements of your culture and identity have you not seen represented in children’s books?

Why is it important for kids to be able to find themselves in the pages of a book?

Left: one group looks at their draft on the last day of workshop with their Story Coach (second from left); Right: the writers looked at examples of other children’s books for inspiration and to consider how diverse families and experiences do – or don’t – show up on the page.

One writer shared a story about visiting her local library with her daughter during Ramadan, hoping to find a book that would help her child understand the significance of the holy month – and how she was surprised at the difficulty she had in locating one. The writers also talked about how they wanted their children to see their family structures represented in books: single moms, or young parents juggling the responsibilities of college along with their children and jobs. 

One of the Story Coaches, Dwayne Lawson-Brown, shared that their mother carried them across her high school graduation stage when they were a young child. They told the writers that at the end of the week, “Your kids will be able to say: ‘My mom wrote this book.’”

And at the end of the week, the writers – who had been divided into three groups, to write three board books – were all able to go home to their children and say: “I wrote a book.” One writer shared that every day, she’d gone home thinking as she was with her kids, “Mommy is an author now.”

These books do a lot in under twenty pages. They celebrate neurodiversity and offer encouraging words to kids with big feelings; they follow the Saturday adventures of diverse children and their mothers; and they give affirmations for young children and their families, offering words of encouragement and acceptance for all the things that make them unique. 

We’re grateful to our Story Coaches and Illustrators, for working alongside these young writers, and for Generation Hope, for their partnership in this project. And we were thrilled to have Teaching for Change share a presentation on the importance of diversity in children’s books, and Inspired Child, who spoke with writers about what makes a successful early childhood book. 

Sturdy board book editions of the Mini Mirrors Series will be available in early 2026! And to check out the set of 4 board books created in the first Mini Mirrors series, head to our bookstore.