Kids: in addition to being the beneficiary of children’s literature, they help to inspire their fair share of it too.

Take, for instance, Monsters Go Night-Night, the utterly fun, funny and (dare I say?) adorable new bedtime book by Aaron Zenz. All the monsters in the book were inspired by drawings Zenz’s young son made. Which he explains over at this Monsters Go Night-Night blog post.

This “fan art” to his son turned into the characters for Monsters Go Night-Night.

Then Zenz took it one step further, creating a Twitter account and hashtag (#MonstersGo) so that others could join in the fun of remixing his son’s monster drawings:

Join us as we redraw 7 of Elijah's monsters over 7 wks! Here's monster number1: #TheSmag for Fri Jul 22 #MonstersGo pic.twitter.com/LLCxRM6aFb

— Monsters Go (@Monsters_Go) July 20, 2016

A whole bunch of artists joined in:

Did the @Monsters_Go challenge! Redrawing a 5 year olds drawing of a monster. So much fun pic.twitter.com/iF4mSvYU8W

— Adam Reed (@HiAdamReed) July 22, 2016

To help spread the word about his book, Zenz offered to Monsters Go Night-Night-ify some drawings made by my kids (ages three and six). I asked them. They were in. They got busy making some monsters. We sent them off to Mr. Zenz.

My three-year-old son created:

Bob.

Here’s Aaron’s version of Bob:

Side by Side:

My six-year-old daughter created this furry guy:

Mr. Fancy.

And here’s Aaron’s version:

Side by Side:

Thank you Aaron Zenz for the fun!

The Monsters Go Night-Night Blog Tour continues . . .

Mon Aug 15  :  Watch. Connect. Read.
Tues Aug 16  :  100 Scope Notes
Wed Aug 17  :  Nerdy Book Club
Thu Aug 18  :  Sharpread
Fri Aug 19  :  All the Wonders
Sat Aug 20  :  Playing by the Book
Sun Aug 21  :  Writing for Kids (While Raising Them)
Mon Aug 22  :  A Fuse #8 Production