Why Esta Spalding employed a 10-year-old editor

While living with her daughter in Los Angeles, Esta Spalding came up with Look Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts as a creative alternative to watching TV after school. What started as a game turned into a book, and turned her daughter into a rigorous editor. The book is about a group of four resourceful children who bathe in the ocean and sleep in a car.

On collaborating with her daughter

My husband was living in Canada at the time and I was with my daughter for a few months in Los Angeles. She would come home from school in the afternoon and do a bit of homework, but because we were new to the area and we didn't know many of our neighbours, I didn't want our evenings to be spent sitting and watching television together. I started writing this story for her. It seemed like this fun thing where I wrote during the day, then read to her and she edited me. It was never intended as a book, but more of a game between us. 

I wanted to share a fun project with her. Some people would have done other things with their kid. I don't know how to knit, I don't know how to cook very well, I don't garden... The only thing I know how to do is write something that would amuse her, and she could help me play with it, like it was clay.

On the right way to love

I realized later that the important thing in the book is that the children — Kim, Kimo, Pippa and Toby — know how to love properly, and every single one of the adults has learned to love the wrong thing. It was my kid that helped me figure this out. The parents love their money, or they love their beauty or they love their career. But the children understand loving properly.

That's the feeling that I have when I read the great books from my childhood. It feels like the children love properly and the adults are in this other place. As an adult, I love reading children's books. I love finding that kid in myself who knows the right way to love.

Esta Spalding's comments have been edited and condensed.