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What Do You Do With An Idea? Summary And Main Themes

2025-12-30 02:31:55

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Ella

A great book for when ideas just seem to hang around, nagging, like children. What Do You Do With an Idea? is a story for any age of creative. This little idea starts life as a tiny, egg-like, leggy thing. The little kid in the story grows up alongside it, and how it evolves is just lovely. How it tackles fear of failure and rejection, and being too afraid to share your work with others is really relatable.

The work is simple but brilliant. A kid chooses to nourish his idea with a sandwich while others dismiss it, again and again. This mirrors the kind of self-doubt so many of us experience when struggling to bring our ideas to life, and how the more we protect our ideas from negativism the more extraordinary they become. I find the simple transition from monochrome to yellow-gold-colored illustrations where the kid’s and the idea’s crown happily bounces, to be simply a wonderful conclusion to the story of the power of ideas that need no permission to be extraordinary.

2026-01-01

Stella

I read this today while drinking a cup of warm tea on a rainy day, and it was very comforting but also invigorating. This book is a straight-forward story of a child who protects an idea of his, has it criticized and then watches it grow. But the subtext of this book is amazing. The fragility of the idea that the child in the story protects is exactly how creativity feels when it’s new. One harshest comment and it can be crumpled up into a ball. I love this book so much because it makes me feel like the child in the story: “What if everyone hates it?”

There are two main themes to the book. The first is courage in vulnerability and the second is quiet rebellion in persistence. The book does not portray the doubters negatively, but instead as something the child overcomes. As the child grows in confidence he starts to defiantly declare that he likes his idea. This shift from needing validation to feeling joy is everything. The surreal ending where the child’s idea grows up to be a huge, glowing orb is the moment that occurs for all ideas when they finally click into place for us. We must remember to give our ideas food, shelter and time just as we do living things. Every time I re-read this book I want to grab my old notebooks and start again.

2026-01-03

Emma

I read ‘What Do You Do With an Idea? by Christie professional friend Ben Pruchno, author/illustrator of this fabulous book for children & grown-ups in the midst of lots of change in my life recently. This sweet little story follows a child and their fragile, fanciful idea of a golden crown. This precious little notion is challenged by the children and even grown-ups around our protagonist but the core of the story is the transformation that occurs when our hero decides to believe in the idea. And it grows and grows until it completely transforms their world. As always, the creativity is vulnerable in the first place but then resilient. Loose line drawings add to the sense of reality.

It normalizes the fear of others judging your idea as being too silly to implement. But at the same time it is saying ideas thrive the more attention you give them, even if they aren’t perfect. The ending is extremely powerful, the idea erupts into this incredibly bright, vibrant and extreme spectacle. For me it’s not just a book to encourage people to chase their ideas. It’s also a celebration of the process and all the messiness involved. I can appreciate this book even more as it resonates deeply with my own thoughts of “What if…?”.

2026-01-03

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