Children’s books can do two jobs at once, according to author Greg Soros. One child may open a story and find a reflection of their own life, while another finds a view into a life they have never lived. Soros calls this the mirror and window approach, and it sits at the center of how he builds characters.
“Others need windows into experiences different from their own, building empathy and expanding their understanding of the world,” he says, describing readers who benefit from meeting characters unlike themselves. For other children, the value comes from recognition and the comfort of knowing someone else feels the way they do. Greg Soros champions the idea that children’s literature must serve as both mirror and window, a perspective he outlined in a recent feature by Walker Magazine.
One Story, Two Purposes
Soros believes the strongest books accomplish both aims in the same pages. A character dealing with a particular struggle might help one reader feel seen while showing a classmate a different way of experiencing the world. That dual goal affects which characters he chooses and how each plot unfolds.
The author Greg Soros has written for young children for many years, and over that span he has grown wary of shallow representation. “It’s not enough to simply include characters from different backgrounds,” he notes.
Characters With Their Own Arcs
What Soros wants instead is depth. “Those characters need authentic voices, realistic challenges, and their own complete emotional arcs. They can’t exist just to teach other characters lessons.” A supporting figure who appears only to deliver a moral to the main character fails both the mirror and the window.
This view connects to his broader thinking about emotional honesty. Kids today expect nuanced portrayals of complicated feelings, and a token character cannot meet that expectation. Every person in a story, whether central or secondary, needs an inner life and room to change.
The framework offers a useful test for anyone choosing or writing books for children. Ask whether a reader could see themselves in a character, then ask whether another reader could learn something real from that same character. For Greg Soros, a book that answers yes to both questions is doing its work. Refer to this article for additional information.
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