Dr. Seuss spent nine months composing The Cat in the Hat. It uses just 220 different words and is 1,702 words long. He was a meticulous reviser, and he once said: "Writing for children is murder. A chapter has to be boiled down to a paragraph. Every word has to count."
https://thewritersalmanac.substack.com/p/the-writers-almanac-from-saturday-ace
@estherschindler
The best books are edited to the bone.
How I wish I had that skill.