Representation in children’s books has become a bigger conversation in publishing, and children’s author Greg Soros has strong opinions about what it takes to get it right. According to Soros, simply placing a character from an underrepresented background into a story is not enough on its own. Real inclusion, he argues, requires far more craft than a name or a description implies.
Soros insists that these characters need authentic voices, realistic challenges, and complete emotional arcs of their own. In his view, a diverse character should never exist purely to teach a lesson to someone else in the story. That character deserves the same narrative depth, stakes, and resolution as any other protagonist.
Characters as Mirrors and Windows
To explain how he balances these demands, Greg Soros often returns to a framework he calls mirrors and windows. Some young readers need to see their own experiences reflected back at them, confirming that they are not alone in what they feel. Other readers need windows into lives unlike their own, building empathy for experiences they have not personally lived.
Soros treats these two functions as equally important rather than competing goals. A single character, he notes, can offer one child a sense of recognition while offering another an introduction to an unfamiliar experience. Achieving both at once, he says, is where the strongest children’s writing tends to land.
Research as a Foundation
None of this happens without groundwork. Soros describes an extensive process of research and consultation behind his manuscripts, drawing on child development specialists and educators to make sure his portrayals hold up. That collaboration, paired with years of hands-on writing experience, has become a defining feature of how Greg Soros approaches every new project, and it shows in the specificity with which his characters are drawn.
For an author working in a genre that reaches children at some of their most formative years, that level of care carries real weight. Soros treats each manuscript as an opportunity to widen a reader’s world without flattening the individuality of the characters doing that work, a distinction he considers easy to state and difficult to execute well. Refer to this article for additional information.
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