I wrote some children’s books. I had some help from Artificial Intelligence (AI). Maybe after you read this, you’ll want to buy one of my books or hire me to write one about your family too?

I love sharing stories about my family. Even if you don’t really know me you probably know that I’m obsessed with family history. I know that most people are, at best, mildly interested in the past. I have been somewhat successful over the years getting people who wouldn’t have pursued it on their own to spend a minute now and then thinking about their ancestors. I’ve written blog posts, I’ve written family history books, I’ve told stories in person, and I have bugged relatives to share their stories, pictures, and memories. A lot of people have supported my pursuit. I’ve written two books for my oldest granddaughter to introduce her first to her family tree and second to her Grandma Denise. I am always trying to dream up new ways to share our family history with her, and eventually with her little sister too.

I also have an interest and aptitude for technical things, from the software side of things anyway. I’ll leave the hardware and operating system things to my husband. Having spent decades of my life in the world of Information Technology, I am fascinated by the recent fascination of the larger world with the concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI). My first practical exposure to AI was back in the 1990s when another team under my same management was assigned to do AI work. At the time, I believe they were looking at, among other things, how to understand the patterns of gamblers at casinos so that they could provide incentives to have people play longer and more frequently. So, to me, AI is not a new concept. As I’ve shared in other posts (for example, Quick break with Jonas Weed, AI and estate settlement, and More AI and  Place I’d Like to Visit), I am trying to understand how this new much-hyped version of AI might be able to help me. I’m always looking for another tool for my toolbox.

If you know me well, you know that my mind cannot stand still and when I get an idea, I run with it. A few months back, I got the idea that maybe I could use AI to help me write children’s books about my family history. With six books completed, I thought it would be good to stop and write about my experiences.

Concept Phase

Would this work?

Could I really accomplish this?

My goal was to put family stories into an illustrated storybook format that would be appropriate for young readers. Specifically, my granddaughters.

Storybooks need illustrations.  I cannot draw. My four-year-old granddaughter has been able to draw better than me for at least a year. She is extremely talented – says her grandmother. I have lots of ideas in my head but when my hand tries to transfer them to paper, the best I can do is an awkward stick figure.

Recently when drawing with her, she looked at what I had drawn and replied, “That’s okay Grandma, you tried.”

My talents lie in other areas.

What type of writing is appropriate for a young reader? I do not know what is appropriate for, say, a 1^st grade reading level. I can use big words, and I can use little words, but I do not know which words work for a kid.

Could AI help?

I decided to find out.

I experimented by asking an AI tool to turn a paragraph that I had already published in one of my comprehensive family history books into a children’s story. It came back with a version that would work for a child. I then asked if it could break the story down page by page and include illustration instruction. It could. I smiled. It wrote the story with creative dialog and suggested illustrations that would fit the story.

Maybe this could work?

First, I brainstormed on which stories I could start with. My mind was full of ideas.

I currently have over thirty-five possibilities and wake up most mornings with another idea or two to add to the list.

I experimented with a few stories and then decided I would initially pick four to work to completion. When reading with her, my granddaughter seems to like to look at other books pages to see what else she could be reading or has read, so I thought it would be fun to be able to add a page like that to my books. So, I decided to start with a series of four books.

After I received proof hardcopies of those four in the mail, I decided to do two more.

Chosen Stories

The ones that made the first round of six were:

1. Margaret and the Missing Pancakes: A story that Margaret Olga Aldahl Christianson told about a time she helped after her sister had a baby.
2. The Little Driller: A story my uncle Merlin shared about my dad.
3. Bang! And Coralee’s Broken Arm: A childhood story my mother-in-law loves to tell—about the day she broke her arm in a one-room schoolhouse.
4. Camping with Raccoons: A collection of stories from my youth that involved camping and raccoons.
5. Sauerkraut Surprise: A story about when my father-in-law learned to like sauerkraut.
6. One Day They Tied Gilbert to a Tree: A day my mom remembers from her childhood at Cullen Park.

Writing and Story Development

I wish I could report that I started with book number one and got it done then moved on to the next. But really, I flitted around a lot. I was learning what worked and what didn’t. I started and stopped and restarted every book from scratch at least once. There was a learning curve.

While the tool offered, I did not need help with brainstorming on my story ideas. The stories I’m writing are based on real things that happened to real people in my family tree. I found that AI sometimes tried to add other things into the storyline, but that didn’t happen often and could easily be ignored. I was concentrating on true-story adaptation into children’s book format.

Writing simplified text for early readers

The AI tool was helpful in simplifying the text for early readers.

A Case Study

Here is a demonstration of how it worked.

Tell the tool your story

As a case study for this post, I asked the tool to turn the following paragraph into a children’s story.

My sister, D—, hosted a birthday party for Dad’s 89th birthday party. Denise brought a three-layer cake that she had baked and decorated. In transit, a couple of the flowers fell off the cake, but she was able to stick them back on. It didn’t look perfect, but that was okay. There was a sizable crowd for the event but only two children. W—, age five, and E—, age seven, D—‘s grandsons, were there. They agreed to help their Great-Aunt Denise put 89 candles on the cake. The candles came in packs of 24 and each package had four colors, blue, yellow, green, red. W— decided that before any candles were placed on the cake, they needed to be divided into piles of the like color. So he started sorting. His brother helped. They put all the red candles together, all the blue candles together, etc. When they were done sorting, they decided it was time to put candles on the cake. They helped, so did Denise. By the end, W— was able to put two and then three candles at a time into the cake top. With that many candles there was barely room. Finally, all 89 candles were on the cake. It took several adults to get them all lit. W— accidentally blew a bunch of them out before we got to sing, so some of them had to be relit. Finally, everyone crowded around and sang, “Happy Birthday!” Then W— and E— helped their Great-Grandpa blow out all those candles. It took a few blows to get them all out. Everyone hoped that W— had not spit on the cake. It was a good birthday.

See if the tool got it right

The tool came back with what it called a birthday adventure “written for a 1st to 2nd grade reading level, with gentle humor and a warm family tone.”

W—, E—, and the 89 Candles

It was a special day.
D— was throwing a party for her dad.
He was turning eighty-nine!

There were lots of grown-ups at the party.
But only two kids—W—, who was five, and E—, who was seven.
They were D—’s grandsons.

Denise came in carrying a big cake.
It had three tall layers and lots of little frosting flowers.
Some of the flowers had fallen off during the drive,
but she stuck them back on.
It wasn’t perfect, but that was okay.

“I need help,” Denise said.
“We have to put eighty-nine candles on this cake!”

“Eighty-nine?” W—’s eyes got wide.

The candles came in packs of twenty-four.
Each pack had red, blue, green, and yellow candles.

Before they started, W— had an idea.
“We have to sort them first,” he said.
“All the red ones go here. All the blue ones go there!”

E— joined in.
Together, they made neat little piles of each color.

“Now we can put them on the cake,” W— said.

He poked one candle into the cake,
then two at once,
then three at a time!

There was barely any room on the top of the cake.
Candles were everywhere—standing like tiny, colorful soldiers.

Finally, all eighty-nine were in place.

“Time to light them!” someone called.

Three grown-ups grabbed lighters.
It took all of them to light that many candles.

W— got excited and blew on the cake too soon.
Whoooosh! Half the candles went out!

“Oops,” he said.
So they lit them again.

Then everyone sang: “Happy Birthday to you…”

W— and E— helped their Great-Grandpa blow out all eighty-nine candles.
It took a lot of puffs.

Someone whispered,
“I hope W— didn’t spit on the cake.”

But Great-Grandpa just laughed.
“It’s my birthday! Spit or no spit, I’m eating cake!”

And he did.

It was a very good birthday.

The tool suggested fun dialog and told it as a good story. It also made some things up such as there being three adults with lighters lighting the cake. That isn’t exactly how it happened, but I would be able to correct the tool to fix that, so it was a good start.

Change the reading level

Then I asked for a kindergarten reading level instead. The tool gave me a revised version of the story rewritten for a kindergarten reading level — shorter sentences, simpler words, and more repetition for clarity and rhythm.

W—, E—, and the Birthday Cake

It was a big day.
D— had a party.
It was for her dad.
He was turning 89!

There were lots of people.
But only two kids.
W— was five.
E— was seven.
They were D—’s grandsons.

Denise brought a cake.
It was big.
It had three layers.
It had flowers on it.

Some flowers fell off.
But Denise put them back.
It was still a good cake.

“I need help,” said Denise.
“We need to put on 89 candles!”

W— and E— said, “We can help!”

The candles were red, blue, green, and yellow.
W— said, “Let’s sort them!”

So they did.

Red with red.
Blue with blue.
Green with green.
Yellow with yellow.

Now it was time.
Time to put candles on the cake!

W— put in one.
Then two.
Then three at a time!

E— helped too.
Denise helped too.

The cake was full of candles!
All 89 were there.

Three grown-ups lit the candles.
It took a long time!

Then—whoosh!
W— blew too soon!
Some candles went out!

So they lit them again.

Then everyone sang:
“Happy birthday to you!”

W— and E— helped Great-Grandpa blow out the candles.
It took many big blows!

“I hope W— didn’t spit on the cake,” someone said.

Great-Grandpa laughed.
“It’s my birthday! I’ll eat it anyway!”

And he did. It was a very good birthday.

This took less than five minutes from my initial request through the revised response. I find this rather amazing.

Breaking stories into page-by-page layouts

The next step, which the tool offers to do without me even asking, is to break the story into pages. Continuing with our example story, it would suggest:

Page 1

Text:
It was a big day.
D— had a party.
It was for her dad.
He was turning 89!

Page 2

Text:
There were lots of people.
But only two kids.
W— was five.
E— was seven.
They were D—’s grandsons.

And so forth.

If needed, I could spend time with the tool writing text for individual pages or rewriting text to match tone or character behavior. In my uneducated opinion, the tool does a nice job of creating age-appropriate dialogue. And I’m always still the boss and can change the story any way I want.

Page 5

Text:
“I need help,” said Denise.
“We need to put on 89 candles!”
W— and E— said,
“We can help!”

In other stories I have found that the tool is good at adding humor, emotional beats, or historical accuracy – though in the case of most of my stories, I do have to correct it sometimes to match the historical accuracy of our real family story.

Illustration Planning

The next big step in writing a children’s book is coming up with illustrations. As we have already established, I am not an illustrator. I am also not wealthy enough to hire a professional illustrator. This hobby of mine is already extremely expensive and I do not make money on my books, so while there are many professionals out there who would do a much better job than me and a much better job than AI, that is just not an option for me. So being able to create illustrations seems particularly incredible to me.

The tool makes suggestions based on the story we are telling. It is a good starting place. In our case study the suggestions included:

Page 1

Illustration:
A festive living room or community hall with a “Happy Birthday” banner. D— stands near a table setting up food. Her dad (an older man with white hair and glasses) is smiling in the background, wearing a birthday hat.

I then can work with the tool to try to create the right room – in this case in my sister’s house. I can upload a photo of the real place to give the tool some ideas. I can ask for a particular style. For example, I can ask for things to look vintage or cartoon-like, or in this case can ask for a children’s storybook style. The resulting illustration does not look exactly like my sister’s house but captures some of the elements of the photo I gave it. The cake looks quite a bit like the real cake. Yes, it looks better than the real thing – my cake decorating skills are only slightly better than my drawing skills. But it was delicious! I can bake!

If I didn’t like the room or the cake, I could iterate with the tool to change things to get them how I want them to look.

Character Design

Designing characters based on real people and photos

The next step is to create the main characters for the book. Given a photo, the AI tool can often, but not always, create a character that resembles the real person. Some people turn out better than others. There have been just a couple people who, in my opinion, never turn out how they really look – apologies to my husband.

In my opinion, the tool did a lot better creating a Leona character for the Bang! book than it did creating a Margaret for the Missing Pancake book.

It is fun to start with a real photo for these family stories, but you can also just let the tool make things up. For “extras” in stories, like people in a crowd or kids in a classroom, the tool can be given as much guidance as you wish to give, or it can just be allowed to make things up. Here are the quick versions of my grandnephews that the tool designed for me from real-life photo references.

I first asked for storybook illustrations.

Since these boys are so cute, I thought it would be fun to try some other styles.

Note that the tool produces somewhat random results – there were changes from one storybook style rendition to the next. When I do not give specific instructions, such as asking for the word “hockey” on the t-shirt, the tool just does what it wants from picture to picture.

Character Consistency

I found one of the hardest things was what the tool calls establishing and locking in visual character consistency. I often had to work with the tool to fix illustration continuity errors. We saw that it didn’t retain the word “hockey” on E—‘s shirt. As another example, when I was working on my books, ever so often it would forget the right hair color or hairstyle. I had to be persistent to get the character to look the same in every scene. It was important to ask the tool for detailed illustration instructions that I could reference and feed back into the tool when it got off track.

Historical Accuracy

Because unlike our case study, most of my stories happened in the past, I could direct the tool to use historical accuracy in clothing, objects, and architecture. I could ask for a 1948 one-room schoolhouse in Illinois or a 1972 campground scene in the Wisconsin Dells. It seems to know a lot of things.

Here are W— and E— in 1920. If you look closely, you see that one candle is not lit and E— appears to have snuffed it out with his fingers. I ran into many weird things like that. If I was using this in a book rather than just as an example, I would have had to chat with the tool to have that changed. A kid should not be doing that – AI just made it up.

Putting characters in motion

Once I established a character, I could make it do things for the story. For example, let’s prompt the tool, “Can you create an illustration of W— racing a car down a track?”

Adjusting Age Appearance

I could also work on changing the age of the characters. “Can you make W— a teenager?“

We’ll have to wait a few years to see how accurate it is.

I remember back in probably the early 1990s joking around and using an early graphics program (maybe Paintbrush?) to mark up a photo to take hair off my brother-in-law’s head. We were imagining how he would look bald. He wanted to know if he should get married sooner than later based on how he’d look without hair. That process was silly and painstakingly slow and produced only crude results. Now, I bet AI could do the job in seconds. Technology has made great strides and lucky for him, he has not gone bald – yet.

Sweet Emotions

Once we have a character, we can change their appearance to fit the story. For example, let’s make W— sad and then surprised.

Computers are so fun!

Creative Problem Solving & Feedback

Using an AI tool to help write my children’s books has been successful. But I have run into some issues along the way. In some cases, being persistent helped. In other cases, I had to change my expectations and find another way to show what I wanted to illustrate.

Break the Correct Arm

In my book, “Bang! And Coralee’s Broken Arm,” as you would expect, the main character breaks her arm. It’s in the title, so that isn’t really a spoiler. I could not get the tool to consistently put the cast on the same arm from page to page. Astute readers will notice that on the cover, her right arm is broken but on the pages of the book her left arm is broken. As I was struggling with the tool, I got a version where both arms were broken, one where her arm wasn’t even in the right place, and another when the cast was on a different character.

Below are three of the bloopers.

I tried specifying to put the cast on her right arm. I tried telling it to put the cast on the arm on the left side of the page. At one point, I asked it to describe back to me where the cast was on the last image it created, and it told me that it was on her right arm even though I could clearly see it was on her left in the picture. Had I had lost my own ability to distinguish left from right?

I chatted with the tool a bit after many, many, many unsuccessful attempts to always put the cast on the right arm. I asked if I should give up and it told me:

Haha — no, don’t give up! You’re absolutely not asking for anything unreasonable. It should be simple — and in a normal human-drawn illustration, it would be!

Here’s why this keeps happening:

• The image generator I’m using tends to “mirror” or default the cast/sling placement to the same side over and over — probably because casts and slings often show up in reference images on the left side of the picture (most people are right-handed, so left-arm injuries are common in source material).
• It’s trying too hard to “correct” what it thinks is normal.

BUT we can fix this.

Best Options:

• I can keep generating until we catch a good version (I’m game for that if you are).
• OR I can generate the cast/sling separately on the correct arm and then combine it cleanly with the best overall scene.
• OR I can create the scene without any sling/cast, then add the correct cast/sling in the right spot afterward.

I decided to just leave her left arm broken. When it next gave me a scene with the right arm broken, I used a photo program to flip the image so that it looked like her left.

Only four kids!

Another problem I encountered that just about drove me nutty was when the tool would generate a perfect image to depict a scene but then would add an extra kid or two. I often had to remind the tool what to do after characters or elements were accidentally duplicated or omitted.

In Camping with Raccoons, the tool kept trying to add a fifth kid to our family. We probably were crowded like this with six people sleeping in the tent we borrowed for our first camping trip, but I only had one sister. I had to try hard to get rid of her twin.

When she was finally gone, it gave me an extra brother!

It had a hard time with some scenes. One time we got an extra car and an extra kid. Another time, we had an extra kid but others were eating outside in the storm, and probably worst of all was when kids were inside the car engine. These are just a few examples of the illustrations that were off.

I did laugh out loud but was also a little creeped out at how friendly the tool was acting when I asked for the character illustration of my youngest brother, and it came up with this:

I wasn’t sure what to think so I typed, “Haha.”

The tool came back with:

“Haha! Gotta love those super serious instructions sometimes.

Want me to try again — this time with your youngest brother (age 4¾), standing in front of your green canvas tent, like from Camping with Raccoons: Part 1?

I’ll make sure it’s him —, slightly darker less-wavy hair than before, appropriate time-period clothes, and no raccoons sneaking in (yet!).

Ready for me to generate that?”

The tool might have a thing for raccoons because days later it tried inserting raccoons into images for stories that didn’t even feature raccoons.

How does a drill work?

In The Little Driller my dad was using a hand auger. The tool knew what a hand auger looked like. It could draw one laying on the ground.

It could not draw one in use. I tried a million times (exaggerating just a little bit) but could not get it to draw a correct auger in action.

Finally, I gave up and redesigned my scenes so that the drill did not have to be in use. I felt a little defeated but am still happy with my storybook.

Policy Violations

Along the way, my request for an image was occasionally denied. I wanted to create a page that showed the real ancestors next to their characters in the story. The AI tool told me that their content policy does not allow combining or editing real identifiable photos of people. It wouldn’t let me show a toddler character in a swimming pool. And it would not let me have Coralee looking into the boys’ bathroom through a transom window. I’ve had to rethink some things to stay within the rules. In all cases, the tool gave me some suggestions on approaches I could take instead. It can be frustrating to not be able to bring a scene to life as it looks in my mind, but I understand there are policies to prevent nefarious use of the tool.

Persistence and Flexibility Required

Most of the time I could suggest alternative approaches when illustrations or wording didn’t work, and I had to fact check the tool sometimes. For example, it tried to change my words to say something about the hallway in the one-room schoolhouse, which probably didn’t even have a hallway. It also forgot the era in which a story was set a time or two and had to be reminded to adjust certain items or clothing.

I achieved most of what I set out to do. I had to be patient. I had to be persistent. I had to be flexible. In the end I got my books written.

Many AI Tools Available

A couple more thoughts about using artificial intelligence tools…

I have written about my experiences with ChatGPT. It is not the only tool out there. You may find one that you like better. I cannot recommend it as the best but it did work for my purposes.

But it was not the only AI I used to put together my children’s books. I was especially excited about the capabilities of AI while doing the Bang! book. Last summer, we made an audio recording of Coralee telling that story. There are many audio transcription tools, but I just used Microsoft Word. I put the audio file into Word and asked for a transcription. It was rather crude but without any editing, I copied the resulting text into ChatGPT and asked it to write the story. Wow! In minutes I had a starting point for my storybook.

Technology can be great!

Will I Write More Children’s Books?

Yes!

I do need to get back to making progress on my McCall Family History book, but I will also be working on some children’s books. I may change my mind, but I already have several picked out for my next editions in the series.

As I learn what to request and the tool learns what I’m requesting, I’ll get better and better results. I am already getting better content than when I first started (which is why after learning a few things I started over at least once on every one of the books that I’ve finished).

However, there are still some things that I couldn’t get to work – like having the tool create a family tree for me. That required putting characters in precise places on a page and the tool just couldn’t follow directions. Hopefully, over time, AI will get better too. My technical family has informed me that technically, I could create my own AI model and train it to do the things I want, but for now, I’m going to stick with the tools I have available to me so that I can spend my time creating rather than being technical. I did too much of that stuff before I retired and just want to do the fun stuff now.

Remember, AI is just a tool

AI cannot replace the creativity, ideas, and research skills that an author needs to write a book.

A professional illustrator would do a much better job with the pictures.

It cannot replace hard work, dedication, persistence, or determination.

It is a tool.

I think of it as another tool in a whole long line of advancements over time.

Microsoft Word and other computer word processors replaced typewriters. Typewriters replaced pen and paper. Ballpoint pens replaced the need for inkwells. And well, we don’t have to chisel things on stone tablets anymore.

AI is a new tool in the tool box.

It can do amazing things. I am glad to know how to use it.

I wonder what will come next?

What do my granddaughters think?

I delivered copies of the first six books to my granddaughters last weekend. It was a busy day at their house so I was not able to be the one to read them and see a reaction first hand, but after all the guests left, Camping with Raccoons was the chosen bedtime story of my eldest granddaughter. I received word that she was “riveted.”

The younger one is too little to give an opinion yet. So right now it is important to know what the four-year-old thinks. She already has shelves full of beautifully written books by professionals—but I’m hoping she and her little sister will enjoy the ones Grandma Denise wrote, too.

Maybe, just maybe, a few bits of our family’s story will stick with them and stay with them in ways they don’t even realize yet.

Interested in my books?

If you are interested in a copy of any or all my children’s books, you can buy directly from Lulu through the following links.

Margaret and the Missing Pancake

The Little Driller

Bang! And Coralee’s Broken Arm

Camping with Raccoons

Sauerkraut Surprise

One Day They Tied Gilbert to a Tree

Interested in help writing your own books?

Family Past Expert can help you turn your family stories into illustrated books for the children in your life. Just share your story, and we’ll take it from there. If you’d like the characters to resemble real people, you can send us photos to guide the illustrations. You can also provide images of real places if you want the setting to look familiar. We’ll create a draft of the story along with sample character illustrations for your review. Once approved, we’ll finish the book and help you set it up with a self-publishing service so you can order printed copies. Work is billed by the hour. Contact us to learn more.