Book 1: How I Wrote "Tengu in the Corner"

I wrote three versions of my first story before I found the right one.

All three were about the same character — a Tengu, a creature from Japanese folklore with a long nose and dark feathers. In the old stories, Tengu are powerful and sometimes frightening. In my book, the Tengu is just sad. People are scared of him, and scared people don't stick around, so he's alone.

The first version had the Tengu meeting Bear outdoors, near a river. The second had Bear following the sound of quiet crying through the woods. The third had them sharing a scarf in an imaginary space.

I chose the first.

Each version had a different repetitive phrase — the line that comes back on every page, the one that builds rhythm in a bedtime story. Version one's was "Nobody sees me." Version two's was "Who will hear me?" Version three's was "Cold and alone."

I scored all three on structure, vocabulary, word count, and how much work the phrase did. "Nobody sees me" won because it does the most with the least. Three words. A complete emotional state. And it sets up the reversal — when Bear finally does see the Tengu, the whole story turns on the word "sees."

When I write for a three-year-old, I'm not trying to be clever. I'm trying to find the one phrase that carries the whole story. Everything else is getting to that phrase and then away from it.

Then I tried to draw it.

This was harder. Much harder.

The first time I drew Tengu, he looked like a different creature on every page. A fat crow on page one. Something with bat wings on page two. By page twelve, both characters had somehow become human boys. I'd described the scene — "Tengu in a dark corner, looking sad" — but I hadn't described what Tengu actually looks like. Without that anchor, every page was a fresh invention.

I drew the whole book three times.

By version three, I'd written a 19-line physical description of Tengu and pasted it into every page's instructions: "small round bird creature with dark blue-gray feathers, long orange beak-nose, small pointed ears, large gentle round eyes." I wrote similar rules for Bear, including the detail that his scarf is blue. Non-negotiable. (In version two, the scarf had been red, then orange, then missing entirely. I had to write "BLUE, not red, not orange, BLUE" to make it stick.)

Version three isn't perfect. Tengu's ears change shape between pages. Bear's proportions shift. But the characters are recognizable — you can follow the same Tengu from page one to page twelve, and that matters more than anything else in a picture book.

I'm working on a way to remember what my characters look like. It's my biggest technical problem right now. I'll write about it when I've made progress.

The story was tested on Kazu, age three, over lunch.

He asked to hear it three times.

After three readings, the one thing he remembered: "Bear wasn't scared." Not the sad parts. Not the hiding. The moment someone chose not to be afraid.

I have a belief about children's stories: three-year-olds don't need conflict — they need transformation. This is the strongest evidence so far. Kazu didn't remember the problem. He remembered the change.

He also started pretending to be the Tengu. Assigned his parents as Bear. This wasn't in my plan, but it might be the best thing a story can do — make the reader stop watching and start playing.

Book 1 isn't printed yet. The images need higher resolution for paper, and I need to solve the character memory problem properly before I trust the physical version.

But the story works. The words land. A child chose to hear them three times in a row, then carry the characters into his own play.

That's enough to keep going.

— Kuma