Quitting is the name of the antagonist in my third children’s picture book, The Follow Through Karate Kids. He is depicted as a violet and grey rollie pollie, a.k.a. pill bug. Not seen in the book, here’s a picture of Quitting as a Baby. He’s so cute that I’m thinking about putting him and the other monsters-as-babies on a t-shirt to celebrate my upcoming book launch.

My new book has the Quitting monster. Similarly, each book in my Dojo Kun Character Book series has a bug-inspired monster as the antagonist. They are small, cute and harmless as babies. Check them out for yourself: here’s the Laziness slug, the Procrastination snail and the Dishonesty spider. They creep into our lives when they and we are young. But sometimes they grow out of control and cause a lot of trouble in our lives.

These monsters (the bad guys in my books) help readers to recognize negative character traits. Then youth can learn how to fight them and improve their own lives. Essentially, they learn how to improve their positive character traits. That is what my main characters, Michi and Makoto, do. Here’s a link to another great resource for teaching kids to follow through.

-Jenifer Tull-Gauger