I get asked this question a lot. No, it wasn’t meant to be a children’s book, and I have written that I am glad that it is here. But what people seem to want to know is, “How does it get to be a children’s book?”
Well, first, I write the book. I write for my younger self, mostly. Now, I sometimes write for my students, especially if I feel like they need to be hopeful about something. Some children come from different family backgrounds and sometimes feel like there isn’t much to be optimistic about. I write for those kids. But when I write, I don’t think which shelf this goes under. I just do what I do and present a story according to the best of my ability.
Then, my professor and friends who read it thought that Dragonhearted was clearly targeted at children. This happened back when I was in university, and I was grateful for the community of writers my professor tried to nurture, and the feedback from a few of my close friends who encouraged me.
Normally, you submit a book to an agent, the agent gets a publisher. It helps if you know who your target audience is by this time, although sometimes the agent decides it for you. For Dragonhearted, my friends and professor knew that my book was a children’s book, and my friends Jean and Rachel (hey guys) encouraged me to submit it to the Scholastic Asian Book Award.
I submitted it, I wrote other short stories in the meantime and kept my fingers crossed until I got the email that I had been shortlisted. Although I didn’t win anything at the prize ceremony, the editor, Daphne, emailed me and my book was on its way to being published.
I didn’t sit down and say, “Oh I’m going to write a children’s book and it will touch on X and Y and Z. I will sell it to all the children in Singapore, and I will take over the world! Mwahahaha!” I merely wrote. And I’m glad that there is a category for this book.