Ashworth Career School has trained tens of thousands of people – people just like you – for better careers. Now, it’s your turn. Our home study courses are all
nationally accredited by the Distance Education and Training Council. Let Ashworth
Career School help you prepare for a professional career, earn your associate’s degree, or get your high school diploma.
Why Home Study?
- Comprehensive texts and learning materials are mailed to your home
- Learn in your spare time, at your own pace
- Exams are open-book/open notes
Choose From More Than 50 Courses
If you’re self-motivated, can study independently, and have a strong desire to learn, you’ll enjoy our distance learning programs. Current offerings include:
For more information on the career training adventure of your dreams, just select from the list below. Whatever course you choose, we want you to have an enjoyable experience with distance education!
Fast career education facts at your fingertips: find your favorite career, and click!
Writing for Children Courses
If you want to write children’s books for a living, you don’t necessarily have to earn a college degree. What you do have to do though is tell a good story and craft that story to the audience you’re telling it to. Though a college degree isn’t necessary to be a children’s book author, there are indeed college programs and courses of study well suited to develop an aspiring author’s talents and help them achieve their goal of being published.
It’s very rare to find Bachelor’s degrees in children’s literature, but you won’t have a problem finding Master’s degree programs in it. So, during your undergraduate years you’ll want to be sure to gain as much knowledge and writing experience as you can through the general writing courses offered to all undergraduates. Courses you’ll definitely want to add to your class list include Creative Writing, English Rhetoric, Critical Literature and English Literature.
Though you may not realize it, writing a children’s book is only half the job you’ll have to do if you want to make a living at it. The book will need to be sold to a publisher and will also need to be marketed to the public so they can buy it. There are so many writers these days and the marketplace is constantly changing which means publishers are being more and more picky about the books they decide to publish. It will only help the success of your books if you gain an understanding of your selling audience (publishers) and your reading audience (children). You can do this by taking any number of undergraduate courses in marketing and advertising.
You may decide you want to illustrate your own books or you might decide to work closely with a professional illustrator. Either way, you’ll need to have an in depth understanding of the illustration process and of how you want your story brought to life.
Being able to match words with exciting images is a big part of what makes a children’s book successful. Enrolling in introductory courses in drawing and illustration will only serve to improve your ability to produce a successful children’s book. Even if you don’t plan on illustrating the book yourself, the understanding you’ll gain from these drawing and art courses will only serve to help you work well with a professional illustrator when the time comes.
And these days, not all children’s books are illustrated the way they used to be which was by having illustrations hand drawn or painted. Professional illustrators are now using more non-traditional illustration methods like photo manipulating and graphic design software programs. There are also several types of software that allow the author to design the layout of the book before the illustrator ever sees it.
Courses in Graphic Design, Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator and other media software can be essential to any children's author looking to take the design of their books into the 21st century. Once you graduate with your Bachelor’s degree, you’ll have no problem finding universities that offer Master’s degrees in children’s literature. Most of these universities offer MFAs that you can earn after you take such courses as Creative Writing for Children, Creating Picture Books for Children, Children's Literature and Critical Theory.
So, while you don’t necessarily have to get a degree in order to write children’s books, there are numerous college courses and degree programs that you should definitely consider enrolling in if it’s your dream to be a published children’s author. Any classes you take and degrees you earn will only help you along the path to getting your work published.
