The hardest trick in children’s publishing, according to author Greg Soros, isn’t writing a mirror or a window on its own. It’s getting a single story to do both at the same time, for two different readers, without either function crowding out the other.
Soros has spent sixteen years chasing that balance. A story built around one character’s anxiety, for instance, might land as a mirror for a child managing the same feeling, while for a classmate reading the same pages, it becomes a window into an experience they’ve never had to name themselves. “Children’s books should serve as both mirrors and windows,” is how Soros sums up the goal, adding that the aim is “helping young readers see themselves reflected in stories while also opening their minds to different perspectives and experiences.”
Two Jobs, One Story
Greg Soros argues that children’s books must function simultaneously as mirrors and windows, a perspective highlighted in a recent Walker Magazine profile. Pulling that off consistently takes more than good intentions. Soros draws on a background in child development and educational psychology, along with a process that includes school visits, conversations with child development experts, and collaboration with sensitivity readers, to keep both functions of a story working at once rather than one canceling out the other.
He’s clear about the stakes involved in getting it wrong. “Every children’s book carries the responsibility to contribute positively to a young person’s emotional and social development,” Soros says, a standard that shapes every manuscript before it reaches a young reader’s hands.
Through his community work and ongoing writing projects, Soros keeps returning to that dual mission. Greg Soros believes children deserve stories that let them recognize who they already are while also nudging them toward understanding people whose lives look nothing like their own, and for author Greg Soros, that combination is still the whole point of the work. It’s a demanding standard to hold a picture book to, and Soros seems entirely comfortable holding it there anyway, book after book. Refer to this article to learn more.
Find more information about Greg Soros on https://www.instagram.com/georgesorosfx_/?hl=en