Creating a children’s book as a way to overcome low self-esteem

My first idea when I was brainstorming about what I should do for my personal project was about music. If I am being honest, music is always the first thing that comes to my mind. My previous plan was making an EP album with different kinds of motivational songs. However, knowing that I would not have enough resources to complete that project, I decided to explore my other interests other than music. I used to write a lot of short stories within my imagination ever since I was a tween. Not only stories, but diaries and my experiences. I would write what I achieved that day, where I went and what I did as a memory. Reading over the stories/diary entries I wrote, it made me laugh because now that I am a much better writer than before, I am aware of all my grammatical errors and spelling, as well as how poorly I structured sentences. With this, I chose to improve my skills in writing. Moreover, I loved drawing since I was around 10 years old even though I knew it was really average. I used to draw doodles because of my classmate in my previous school. I was fascinated by his drawing and wanted to draw like him. I also used to draw faces and different kinds of clothes although it was really inadequate. However, I didn’t take it seriously and wasn’t constantly practicing. Therefore, I would like to use this as an opportunity to enhance my illustration skills. I chose this project because I wanted to develop my writing skills, and through MYP Language and Literature, I have made quite good progress which broadened my knowledge. Further, I want to enhance my creativity in illustrating. I have never written a book, but I think of this as an opportunity for me to improve and learn more about the requirements in creating a book. I usually would express my feelings through music, but I would also like to express my own experiences through a fictional story for children who could relate to it. Therefore, my learning goal is to develop my writing skills, learn how a book is structured and published, and enhance my creativity in illustrating by creating a book. Overall, I look forward to how I can execute this project.

Product Goal

I expect myself to create a book with the knowledge and skills I already have, and hoping that from my learning goal, I could achieve more knowledge and strengthen my skills that will help me accomplish my product goal which is to create and publish a children’s book. When picking a topic idea to write about, I immediately knew that I wanted to talk about self-esteem. Part of the reason why I thought of that is because I, myself, experience low self-esteem and I know a lot of people, even young teens and adults (ages 10+), face this problem alone. Therefore, I wanted to write about overcoming low self-esteem. I decided to create a book for upper middle grades because I felt that it was the most suitable media to be able to raise awareness about overcoming low self-esteem and to improve my writing skills. My initial research told me that building an ideal storyline and illustrations would take me a large amount of time, but would be essential to achieve a successful book. To make a successful book, I decided to focus on one topic, and in order to do that, I need to fully understand the topic and make sure I can relate to it.

Reflection

When I started the project, I learned that doing something I was interested in made it easier for me to accomplish this project. Writing is not something I am good at but it interests me, same goes for illustrating. Though I am not the best in writing or illustrating, through this project I got to develop and enhance my creativity and transferred my existing skills and knowledge to this project. I never thought that I would be able to create a book. What I like about books is that they don't have to be real or something that’s already existing. People have different imaginations, so what I think might be different to others. In this project, I also got the chance to express myself and my feelings through writing a whole story. The most important part in creating this product was fulfilling the book’s content and purpose, which was why I included my own experiences and my real thoughts. The thing that I am most proud of achieving through the personal project was creating a whole book with proper writing structure as well as successfully finishing the product independently. It was very stressful when I realized that I was behind the timeline I have set for myself, but by extending my knowledge about how a book is structured, learning how to illustrate step by step through youtube videos, and creating multiple short stories to enhance my writing skills, it helped me deepen my skills and gain confidence. In comparison to the stories I wrote when I was around ten years old, I believe that my writing style, sentence structure, and awareness of grammar and spelling issues has improved. Executing this project helped me enhance my creativity skills as well as my skills in writing and illustrating. I will be able to use the abilities I gained from this project to my current and future academics, and will most likely improve them. However, I believed I might have done better in terms of drawing, so I decided to continue honing my talents in order to improve in the future. After I finished creating my book, I clearly realized and saw how I acquired the same emotions and thoughts as the characters I created in my book. It’s surely because I made the book and characters myself, but as I write my story, it helped me understand myself more, especially towards my personality. Not only did it make me reflect on myself, but I gained and improved my creative thinking skills by writing and drawing. Putting together a story where I could relate frankly helped me out mentally. Even in the middle of my progress on this project, I was overthinking every single minute, asking myself, “What if I’m not satisfied with my project? What if people don’t like it? What if they judged the way I write? I know I’m not that good, but I hope they understand. What if my product gets negative feedback?” However, after accomplishing and reading through my book, eventually the amount of negative thoughts I had in my mind started alleviating.

Product Evaluation

I periodically check the success criteria and standards I set for my product to make sure I was not going out of topic, and that I was in line with the initial purpose of my product. Without Creative Thinking Skills, it would be useless to complete this project because creativity is the most important element in order to complete my product. This goes the same for the Transfer Skills, I couldn’t have made progress on my learning goal if I hadn’t used existing knowledge to generate new ones. My success criteria was not too detailed and it was also not too general. I can also say that my book covers the content product success criteria. However, I failed to print out my book and own a hard copy version. The book measurement wasn’t really exact but it was close to what I expected. There could have been more illustrations for each chapter, and more pages of the book. As an amatuer like me, I am pleased with my product although there is still a lot of room for improvements that could still be fixed. So, I sent out a survey to other people with regard to my product success criteria in order for me to consider their opinion in my final evaluation.