Open their eyes to beauty.

If your child's picture books don't burst with truth and beauty, says children's artist and author Brian Wildsmith, don't even bother to read them. Little ones deserve one the best.

At conception a child's soul is like an empty book in which anything may be written. What we, all of us, write in that empty book will touch the soul of the child and determine who the child will become. This philosophy has motivated all of my 80 picture books for children.

Many of the books I see for children are an insult to them, containing nothing of truth or beauty. Creators of children's books must express beauty and truth, and where possible through compassion, wit, whimsy, and humor awaken the child's sensibilities.

Creativity is a sixth sense. We reach out and bring back an imaginative idea and make it into a reality. It is in the act of creation that an artist feels nearest to God: To create, you have to be at one with yourself, totally composed and at one with the inner self, an act of supreme integrity.

The creative painting for a children's book differs from a free painting: It must be applied to an idea or story; it must interpret the idea in an exciting visual way so as to make the child look and see further into the glorious world in which we live. Seeing is an essential part of education--it kindles curiosity.

My own entry into the art world remains a mystery to me: Poor but loving parents of four children, who made us believe that we could achieve anything if we gave everything to it, were a major factor. It was war time, paints were unobtainable, but pencils and paper were available. I didn't think I was very good at drawing, but my old friends tell me I drew the best racing cars and airplane dogfights in the school. Art as I now know it hardly existed in a mining community consumed by the struggle for survival.

At the age of 16 on my way to a chemistry class, I had a moment of revelation, a burning desire to create. I left school that day and enrolled at the local art school, and from there a scholarship took me to the Slade School of Art at University College London. During frequent visits to the National Gallery I discovered the great Italian Renaissance painters: Giotto, Duccio, Piero Della Francesca, and Fra Angelico, among others. I fell in love with them. Their religious paintings were a miracle of skill, beauty, and intense religious belief.

When I look at most recent so-called religious books for children, I am appalled. It was only a few years ago that I felt I was ready to produce books on religious themes for children. The great 13th-century paintings by Giotto in Assisi of the life of Saint Francis inspired me to produce my own pictorial version of this extraordinary and wonderful man.

My first real encounter with Saint Francis was as a young boy making my First Communion in St. Helen's Church, Hoyland, a small mining town in the English Midlands. Kneeling at the edge of the altar rails, I was more embarrassed that the holes in my shoe soles could be seen by the congregation than terrified at receiving the host for the first time. Looking to my right I saw the statue of Saint Francis, a lamb in his arms and a squirrel perched on his shoulder, a look of great kindness and serenity on his face. He had a halo around his head, which meant he was a saint, and his clothes were shabby and drab. He didn't seem to mind, so why should I worry about the soles of my shoes? His look seemed to say, "It is not the soles of your shoes but the soul within your body that I am looking at."

When I decided to illustrate the Passion of Christ in The Easter Story and later Jesus, I again thought back to my childhood and my talks with my guardian angel. He was important to me then, and he still is. We often talk, and I listen to his advice. In The Easter Story I decided to portray Jesus' guardian angel, always there, always on call, in each picture.

During this time my little granddaughter, Ornella, entered my studio demanding to know who the lovely man with wings was. After my explanation, she asked, "Do I have a guardian angel?"

"Of course," I replied. Some days later she breezed again into my studio. "How is your guardian angel?" I asked.

"Oh, he's in trouble, big trouble. He's in hospital," said Ornella.

"For heaven's sake, what happened?" I demanded.

"Well," she said, "there he was flying around, not looking where he was going, and he bumped into a butterfly."

Only a little child could come up with a story like that, and so for all those gorgeous little children so full of wonder and innocence, let us sharpen our wits and pencils and make sure that what we write and paint will, on the wings of books, fly the child into a world of joy and wonder and imagination and thus help produce a happier and more peaceful world.

We must insist that only the best is good enough for those early impressionable years, when standards are formed for life. Anything less than those high standards is a disastrous and costly mistake. Art is the expression of all that is wonderful, beautiful, mysterious, and divine in the world that we live in.

RELATED ARTICLE: WHY "BAD KIDS" LOVE MY BOOKS

People think they are paying me a compliment when they tell me that I do not really write for children. Or they complain, as one woman at a seminary event did: "No child could possibly understand your books. They are too intense." Yet just the week before, a fifth-grade teacher had sent to me a book report on The Great Gilly Hopkins written, she said, by the "bad boy" of the class. The concluding sentence of the report read: "This book is a miracle. Mrs. Paterson understands exactly how kids feel." Given the choice between the cool understanding of an adult and the passionate heart of a wounded 11-year-old, I will take the heart every time.

I received a letter from an earnest adult who had found some profanity in Bridge to Terabithia and felt a need to tell me that I would be better off with the biblical millstone around my neck than to write such books for the fragile young. Since I take the Bible very seriously, I did not laugh.

Some years ago a woman who was the librarian in a juvenile correctional facility sought me out at a convention. "I work in a detention center for hard-core delinquents," she said. "That doesn't mean shoplifters and runaways. That means murderers and kids who have committed violent crimes. I just want you to know how much our children love your books. The other day a girl brought back a copy of Gilly Hopkins to the library. `This is me,' she said."

This is why I can't clean up my books. If a girl in a center for hardcore delinquents can identify with Gilly, then perhaps she can find someone who will be Trotter for her. It seems significant that the dire warning about the millstone in Matthew 18 is followed soon after by the parable of the 99 who are left safe in the fold while the shepherd seeks out the one lost sheep. Isn't it more important for that one child in a Philadelphia prison to find hope in story than for the book to receive a seal of approval from polite society?

I think well-meaning adults need to realize that the purpose of fiction is not to set examples but, in the words of Barry Lopez, to "sustain us with illumination and heal us ... to repair a spirit in disarray." I cannot bend my characters to fit into narrow definitions of virtuous behavior. The disarray in our children's spirits is not healed nor illumined by perfect role models. Confronted with perfection, children feel judged and condemned. Moreover, characters without sin are lies. Surely God is not honored by lies.

From "Why Do You Write for Children?" by Katherine Paterson, originally published in Theology Today (January 2000). Reprinted with permission.

BRIAN WILDSMITH, author of numerous picture books for children, including Saint Francis and The Easter Story. His latest book, Jesus, is available in the U.S. from Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan (800-253-7521 or www.eerdmans.com). Wildsmith currently lives in France. Artwork from his books is reprinted on these pages (used by permission; all rights reserved).