In Turning a Memoir Into a Picture Book

Ryan Rae Harbuck’s award-winning debut memoir When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Chair offers a keen look into her life after a spinal cord injury in her teens made her a wheelchair user. She’s on a mission to change the narrative of disability, one word at a time. Her new picture book with the same name as her memoir, When I Grow Up I Want to be a Chair, follows Vo, a young girl figuring out who she wants to be.

“Let me know if you’d ever be up for writing a children’s book based off of your memoir!” A moment of pure happenstance from a senior editor at Barefoot stirred something inside of me.

It’s safe to say that I wrote it that very day.

But turning a memoir with themes of grief and overcoming trauma into a story meant for kids should be harder to write, right?

That’s just the thing, though, I think

Research, Reconcile, Repeat: When Sources Don’t Agree

Dr. Laura Gehl is the award-winning author of more than fifty books for young readers, including picture books, board books, lift-the-flap books, and early readers. Her new Barefoot titles Bunnies Know & Grow and Puppies Know & Grow launch the Baby Animals series and follow young animals as they develop.

Often, when I visit schools, kids ask me, “What was the hardest part of writing this book?” For some books, I don’t have a simple answer. But if kids ask me the hardest part of writing these little nonfiction board books about bunnies and puppies, I will know exactly what to tell them. The hardest part of writing these books was that my research sources often did not agree with one another!

For example: When I was researching Bunnies Know and Grow, I had one source that said newborn bunnies open their