Blog & site of children's book author Tara Lazar
Tara has had some temporary technical difficulties, so she thanks you for standing by!
Without further ado, here are the Storystorm Grand Prize winners! I will be in touch via email later this week. I sincerely appreciate your continued patience as I am in the thick of school visit season.
Mia Geiger (Liza Royce Agency)
Maria Marshall (Stephen Fraser)
Susan Glick (Erin Murphy)
Carrie Cook (Sean McCarthy)
Jennifer Schmidt (Kelly Sonnack)
Thank you for your patience! I took a break from Storystorm duties for a while to focus on other things…and now I’m back! BOOM, KAPOW, MEOW!
Firstly, please gather your ideas.
Then, sort them.
Are you ready?
Once you have ideas that you like, start fleshing them out. If you’re a Grand Prize winner, you’ll have the opportunity to share your BEST FIVE IDEAS with a kidlit agent. They’ll respond with feedback recommending which ideas may be best to pursue as manuscripts. (Saves time writing stories that won’t be marketable!) To present your ideas in the best light, I recommend writing them out like jacket flap…you know, that marketing copy on the inside cover of a picture book. Here’s jacket flap for my September 2023 release, FLAT CAT:
Flat Cat was born flat. He wasn’t squashed by an out-of-control ice cream truck, or smushed in a waffle iron. He was just flat. This slick, sly cat could stray and roam anywhere he pleased, keen and unseen. And wouldn’t you know it, Flat Cat liked it just like that.
That is until one day, when Flat Cat accidentally fell splish-splosh right in the wash. And when he emerged from the dryer, Flat Cat wasn’t flat at all. He was adorably puffy and downright fluffy!
Go to your local library (which may be in your own house) and read as many jacket flaps as you can to get a feel for them. You can also read jacket flap marketing text online at book retailers.
Then start writing your own for your upcoming masterpieces! If you’re a GRAND PRIZE winner, five of these pitches are what you’ll present to a kidlit agent to receive feedback.
FIVE Grand Prize Winners will be chosen next week, to be paired with these amazing kidlit agents:
So spend this weekend getting ready! Prize distribution will begin next week!
The 2024 Storystorm Pledge is closed.
If you’ve been participating in Storystorm all month, you’ve been generating scads, scores and stacks of ideas!
Luckily you don’t need stacks to “win” the Storystorm challenge. You just need 30 of them!
When you have 30 ideas, you can qualify to win one of the AMAZING Storystorm Grand Prizes—feedback on your best 5 picture book ideas from a kidlit agent! (List to be announced.) This year there will be at least 5 grand prizes, and hopefully more!
SWEET!
In order to qualify for a Grand Prize, your name must be on the registration post AND the pledge below.
If you have 30 ideas, put your right hand on a picture book and repeat after me:
I do solemnly swear that I have faithfully executed
the Storystorm 30-ideas-in-January challenge,
and will, to the best of my ability,
parlay my ideas into picture book manuscripts.
Now I’m not saying all 30 ideas have to be good. Some may just be titles, some may be character quirks. Some may be problems and some may create problems when you sit down to write. Some may be high-concept and some barely a concept. But…they’re yours, all yours!
You have until February 7th at 11:59:59PM EST to sign the pledge by leaving a comment on this post.
PLEASE COMMENT ONLY ONCE.
The name you left on the registration post and the name you leave on this winner’s pledge SHOULD MATCH. However, when you comment, WordPress also logs info that allows me to recognize you, so don’t worry if they’re not exact.
Again, please COMMENT ONLY ONCE. If you make a mistake, contact me instead of leaving a second comment.
Remember, this is an honor system pledge. You don’t have to send in your ideas to prove you’ve got 30 of them. If you say so, I’ll believe you! Honestly, it’s that simple. (Wouldn’t it be nice if real life were that straightforward.)
Before you sign, you can also pick up your Winner’s Badge!
There are winner’s mugs, T-shirts and tote bags you can purchase at Zazzle.com/store/storystorm (note the items may not be live until late on 2/1). All proceeds go to The Highlights Foundation. If there’s other SWAG you want, I can add it to the shop…just ask!
Now…are you ready to sign?
Then GO FOR IT! Let’s see your name below!
And, CONGRATULATIONS!
by Tara Lazar
Reading the title, it’s not what you think.
I do schedule plenty of things—school visits, weeknight dinners, and birthday parties. But what I’m suggesting here is to schedule NOTHING: time, that is, to DO NOTHING.
No laundry. No grocery shopping. No pickleball. (Please, no pickleball!!!)
I want you to set aside at least 15 minutes every day to just BE. Stare out the window. Have a cuppa cocoa. Let your mind wander. Don’t concern yourself with any task. Don’t start obsessing over your to-do list. Your assignment is NOTHING.
Yes, I want you to relax. Our lives can be tremendously fast-paced. We need time to catch our breath. But there is a simple benefit to letting your mind take a stroll—we wind up going to new, unexpected places.
Since you’ve done the Storystorm challenge now for 30 days, story ideation should have become a habit. But with our busy, modern lives, we can easily forget it, let it go. I’m encouraging you to schedule daydreaming time so you continue this habit throughout the year.
Three years ago, when I wrote about creating a habit, I learned it’s easiest to “piggyback” on an established habit. You can tack daydreaming onto your morning routine. Or afternoon coffee break. Or before-bed wind-down.
I find that daydreaming gets me out of story pickles (again with the pickles?) and provides clarity on an existing project. And when I’m done daydreaming, I think about career goals. What do I want to accomplish this week? Month? Year? You need time to think about these things, and not just while you’re sitting at a traffic light.
Scheduled thinking time is something successful business leaders work into their day. You own a business, too—YOU. Being an author is a business and you should be planning that business. Allow for some quiet time every day to not only imagine new stories, but to set goals and to plan. Don’t let this time be interrupted! It may look like NOTHING, but you’re actually WORKING. Literally!
Today is the last official day of Storystorm. Tomorrow, if you have at least 30 ideas, you can sign the Storystorm pledge to be eligible for one of the Grand Prizes: an evaluation of your best 5 ideas by a kidlit agent. If you don’t have 30 ideas yet, consider today a bonus day, the perfect day to start doing nothing.
by Simone Kaplan
Congratulations on making it to Day 30 of Storystorm!
If you have successfully completed the challenge, you will have about 30 ideas, maybe more.
That’s an ample collection of ideas.
A collection so large that it’s easy to become overwhelmed and unsure of what to focus on next.
I’d like to offer a clear set of steps to help you go from confusion to clarity.
To help you…
…and maintain momentum going forward.
These are things that I’ve learned by working with hundreds of writers, both experienced best-selling ones and newbies. Because, while everybody has their own individual way of getting to a final manuscript, there are some steps that are the same for everyone.
Are you ready?
Here goes:
STEP 1—Organize
Your first step is to organize/collect your ideas so that you can look at them and evaluate them in a strategic way.
It’s crucial to have a place where you collect and record your ideas.
I would suggest creating a document which you title either “Ideas” or “Storystorm 2024”.
Then list all these ideas.
You’re doing this for two reasons.
First, because ideas are elusive and, as you go through your days and weeks, they tend to dissolve and scatter and disappear.
Having a place where you have them all together means that you can go back and add more ideas as they occur to you, add details to the ideas as you have a new insight, or mine the list at a later date for more manuscript ideas.
The second is because having a list will make it possible for you to look at all your ideas at one time and make strategic decisions.
Your list can be as simple as a word or theme: Anxiety
A title: Fred’s Frisbee
or
A sentence: Beebee’s Doll—a story about how a child and a dog share a doll.
or
An idea: Overcoming fear of swimming.
The list can be as long or as short as you would like it to be.
And you can go into as much or as little detail as you would like.
Make sure though that you have enough context so that when you go back to work on the piece you remember why the idea appealed to you in the first place.
Now that you have a somewhat organized list, you are ready to move onto the next step, which is:
STEP 2—Sift
Your second step involves shortening the list to a manageable number.
Given the fact that you can’t write all 30 manuscripts at the same time, you’re going to have to make some decisions.
This is where it starts to feel like you’re panning for diamonds. Not all ideas are diamonds. Some are mere gravel, some are cubic zirconia which sparkle initially but then turn out to lack value, some are semi-precious stones that could become something special, and some are diamonds, which could become gorgeous and amazing.
When you pan for diamonds, you collect a whole bunch of stones in a sifting screen. The fine mesh screen helps sift through dirt quickly, enables you to examine the contents easily, and increases the possibility that you’ll find something precious.
You need to develop the literary equivalent of a sifting screen! A tool to help you look at the contents of your idea pan with interest and discernment.
Here’s the tool, and fortunately, you don’t need mesh and screwdrivers and metal. You have everything you need to move forward.
Start by getting quiet and focused. Close your eyes, place your hands over your solar plexus, and watch your breath for about 30 seconds.
Then read through your list with intention and care. Make a note of (or place a checkmark next to) any idea that seems to call to you. You’re not looking for fireworks—although if something jumps out and is clearly your next idea, that’s great! What you’re looking for are the ideas that seem to sparkle, that have a kind of juiciness, that intrigue you, not because you know where they’re going or what they’re going to be about, but because you want to find out what they might be about.
Be curious and open-minded.
If something that makes you happy or gives you a little charge when you see it on the page, that’s an idea to mark.
Your list should now be considerably shorter and it’s time to move on to Step 3.
STEP 3—Select
It’s time to commit to one idea.
You now have a short list of ideas that appeal to you.
How do you decide which idea to work on first?
You might be looking for the best idea.
But the ‘best idea’ is a myth.
Because you can’t know if an idea is ‘the best’ or even ‘good’ until you begin to work on it.
Just like diamond cutters don’t know whether a diamond is going to be suited for gem or industrial use until they start to cut it and see what flaws or inclusions it contains, you can’t know if your idea is good until you actually do the work of developing your manuscript.
So here’s what in my experience is a helpful truth:
If you need more advice here it is:
Look at the list again with an open mind and an open heart.
Is there anything there that particularly calls to you?
If it does, start there—move to Step 4.
If not, use one of these scientifically validated methods:
or…
Because here’s the important thing about where you start: It’s not the idea that matters, it’s the execution.
At some point you might want to explore all the ideas on your list.
And you don’t have to work on only one idea at a time.
You can take an idea as far as it’ll go then start with another one, while the first one rests quietly in your subconscious. Percolating and working itself out. You can always come back to an idea.
The next step is the first in developing your idea.
STEP 4—Explore
Here’s where you figure out what your unique contribution could be.
Great!
Now you have the idea you’re going to work on next, you’re ready to mine it for magic. Because your job as a picture book writer is to create something fresh and original. You do that by writing the book that only you can write.
And you find that out by using a technique called ‘freewriting’ or ‘stream of consciousness writing’ or ‘brainstorm writing.’ It’s a time-honored way to bypass your conscious mind and access the creative, rich unconscious. To engage with your idea in the hopes that it will reveal secrets and blossom.
So, give your idea some love and attention and see what happens. Here’s how to do it.
Set a timer for 10–12 minutes and, starting with: I want to explore the idea of … just write.
Without stopping, without lifting your hands off the keyboard, without pausing or staring into space. If an unrelated thought pops into your mind, write that down. I forgot to buy laundry detergent, or I’d rather write another manuscript, or I hate this! Then go back to the idea that you’re exploring. Don’t worry about grammar or logic or making sense. Just write until the timer goes off.
And then stop.
You might want to read what you’ve written right away; you might want to wait a while. Do what feels right to you and what aligns with your writing process. When you’re ready, read what you’ve done. You should have a slightly more developed sense about what aspects and elements of the idea are important to you. You might have characters or bits of dialog, ideas for plot or structure. Or you might have come up with other aspects you want to explore.
Do as many freewriting sessions as you need or want to get you to a place where you feel comfortable with what you’re writing about.
Then move on to the next step.
STEP 5—Spread it!
Lean into the picture book format.
It’s time to figure out the shape of your manuscript: what your beginning, middle, and end might look like, and to see which elements you have and which you might still need to develop.
It’s time to spread it! Spreading is the process that unlocks the underlying structure of a picture book and helps you scaffold your story. It’s a little bit like doing an outline but more effective and not quite as restrictive.
Spreading is where you take everything you know about plotting and planning, and you slot it into the 32-page/14-spread picture book structure.
If you’re working with a three-act narrative, you know you have approximately—
Each spread functions like a unit of aesthetic experience that invites the reader to turn the page to get to the next one.
On each spread, character develops, plot advances, or something gets explored.
All you need to do is to write down one sentence per spread.
Thinking of your manuscript in this way will help you get a grip on what’s working, what might not be serving your story, and which elements you might still need and make the necessary adjustments before you actually start to write the book.
Moving Forward and Maintaining Momentum
Your idea is no longer a sparkly, nebulous thing. You have a sense of what it’s about. You also have a sense of where it’s going and how to get there.
Great!
Keep going with the idea and take it as far as you can. When you feel you can go no further, put the manuscript in a safe place like a drawer or a file on your computer called “The Drawer,” a place where you keep manuscripts in process. Let it rest there until you are ready to look at it again.
While some do, not all manuscripts go from idea to finished in one streak. You might need to let your work percolate.
When you’re ready to tackle it again, you can open the folder and pick up where you left off. You will probably find that the manuscript looks different, and that you can bring a different perspective to it.
Until then, you can return to your shortlist and repeat the process with as many ideas as call to you. One at a time.
One idea at a time. One manuscript at a time.
That’s how you write better books and build a body of work.
Onward!
Simone Kaplan is giving away a free e-book on how to use the structure of a picture book—a process she calls Spreading—to scaffold your writing process to all Storystorm participants. You can sign up for it at https://picturebookpeople.com/spreading-process-and-template/. It’ll be delivered to your inbox as soon as you sign up.
She’s also giving a one-hour critique session to one participant. The session will offer a deep dive into their work and will provide personalized individual feedback and guidance to help elevate their understanding of craft.
You’re eligible to win the session if you’re a registered Storystorm 2024 participant and you have commented only once on today’s blog post.
Prizes will be distributed at the conclusion of Storystorm.
Simone Kaplan is a picture book editor, coach, and publishing consultant who has decades of experience helping authors polish their work, and an in-depth understanding of the world of picture book publishing. She shares her expertise with individuals, through critiques, offers weekly prompts, and classes and group programs to help authors write the best picture books they can. You can find her at PictureBookPeople.com.
by Cathy Ballou Mealey
Congratulations Storystormers, you have reached 29 days of ideas! What comes next? You could jot down a plot for your favorite story nugget, or scribble some opening lines. Maybe you will brainstorm clever titles, or look up recent comp books. That’s when you might suddenly discover—oh no!—my idea has already been done!
I can practically guarantee that this has happened to almost everyone at some point in their creative journey. But it does not mean you should give up on your idea! After all, it had enough merit to have been published once, now the concept just needs your fresh take or unique perspective.
Remember old-timey boomboxes like this one?
In a perfect world, your favorite music came through loud and clear as soon as you pushed ON. But if the signal faded or went fuzzy with static, finetuning was required! By spinning the dial or tweaking the antenna, you could find a melody to soothe your soul or set your toe tapping. Think of your initial Storystorm idea like that radio station you must finetune, making adjustments until you hear sweet harmony.
Luckily you have more options than just a wonky knob or wobbly antenna to finetune your initial Storystorm concept. Here are five suggestions to try:
Bonus Tip!
Change the ‘rules’ of your story world or incorporate magical elements. What if bears could fly? What if snow was green? What if writing picture books was easy?
Cathy Ballou Mealey is giving one winner their choice of a signed copy of MAKE MORE S’MORES (US addresses only) or a picture book manuscript critique.
You’re eligible to win if you’re a registered Storystorm 2024 participant and you have commented only once on today’s blog post.
Prizes will be distributed at the conclusion of Storystorm.
Cathy Ballou Mealey is eternally grateful to those who post book reviews! She is the author of MAKE MORE S’MORES, illustrated by Ariel Landy (Sleeping Bear Books, 2023) SLOTH & SQUIRREL IN A PICKLE illustrated by Kelly Collier (Kids Can Press, 2021) and WHEN A TREE GROWS illustrated by Kasia Nowowiejska (Union Square, 2019). Visit her website on most social media platforms @catballoumealey or website CathyBallouMealey.wixsite.com/author.
by Josh Funk
Hiya, Storystormers! January is winding down and you’ve filled your notebook with so many ideas! Great work! (unless you’re still trying to figure out how to register, in which case, you can find the answer here)
Storystorm is all about idea generation. And marketability should be a large part of the ideas you pursue writing come February 1st. Chances are good that not all of your ideas are blockbuster sure fire hits. But maybe they could be with just a little twist.
When I lead workshops about writing picture books, I often joke that you should “stay away from the farm”—and by that I mean, don’t write books about farm animals. We’ve had picture books about farm animals since the beginning of picture books. We don’t really need any more. (the same applies to woodland creatures)
Unless, that is, your farm animal picture book is so special that it will stand out from the decades-worth of picture books about farm animals that came before it. But how do you make that happen? Maybe the cows learn to type. Or maybe the animals start a punk rock band. Or maybe it’s a girl power celebration.
I’ve always been a fan of mashing up ideas, as Teresa Ho Robeson suggested last Sunday. But what if instead of taking multiple ideas and smashing them together, you took a single idea and threw it in a blender: change a critical piece of the story such as the genre/setting/time period.
For example, Jessie Sima’s SPENCER’S NEW PET is about a boy and his new dog (one of which happens to be a balloon). Sounds fun, right? But you know what makes it even better? It’s told in the style of an early 20th century silent film – wordless, monochromatic illustrations, title cards breaking up sections.
Do you have a fairy tale retelling on your idea list? Deborah Underwood & Meg Hunt created a Cinderella retelling where she’s a mechanical fix-it whiz. Could it have taken place in traditional fairy tale times? Sure. But instead, they moved it to futuristic outer space, making INTERSTELLAR CINDERELLA stand out even more in the crowded fairy tale retelling market.
I recently read a YA titled MURDER FOR THE MODERN GIRL by Kendall Kulper and it takes the cake for genre mash-ups (and it was a very good book, too). The best I can describe it is a Gatsby-era, historical fiction, murder mystery(ish), serial killer, legal, political, medical, young adult romantic thriller with hints of an X-Men origin story (not in the ‘hero’ sense, but in that the two main characters each have ‘special powers’) – so I guess you could add fantasy to that list, too? And none of that even spoils anything.
What about me, you ask? Well, thanks for asking. I’ve had a lot of luck changing the genre of each book in the LADY PANCAKE & SIR FRENCH TOAST series.
Book 1, LADY PANCAKE & SIR FRENCH TOAST, is a race (for the last drop of syrup).
Book 2, THE CASE OF THE STINKY STENCH, is a mystery.
Book 3, MISSION DEFROSTABLE, is an action/adventure spy-thriller (it’s actually more inspired by Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade than Mission Impossible, but MISSION DEFROSTABLE was a better title).
Book 4, SHORT & SWEET, is a sci-fi comedy/magical-bodyswap (think Honey, I Shrunk the Kids meets Freaky Friday or Big).
Book 5, THE GREAT CAPER CAPER, is a Las Veggies heist (it’s basically Ocean’s 11 in the fridge).
And this fall, book 6, which I am officially announcing right now, will finally be available. It’s an alien invasion titled …drumroll please … ATTACK OF THE SCONES!
(sorry for the tease, the cover reveal will be revealed next month, but you can preorder it now—out on 9.3.24)
So today, I suggest coming up with some genres you enjoy, or settings you like to read about, or time periods you’ve always been fond of—and jotting those down as ideas.
Then scan over your nearly complete list of ideas you’ve generated this month and see if any of those genre/setting/time-periods might just make some of your ideas stand out even further.
Who knows? Maybe a few years from now we’ll finally get to read your superhero detective farm animal picture book set in winter during the French Revolution on Mars (and if someone does write that book, you better dedicate it to me).
Josh Funk is offering one of either a picture book critique or a signed copy of any of his books to THREE lucky winners.
You’re eligible to win if you’re a registered Storystorm 2024 participant and you have commented only once on today’s blog post.
Prizes will be distributed at the conclusion of Storystorm.
Photo Credit: Carter Hasegawa
Josh Funk is a software engineer and the author of books like the LADY PANCAKE & SIR FRENCH TOAST series, DEAR UNICORN, DEAR DRAGON, MY PET FEET, the IT’S NOT A FAIRYTALE series, the HOW TO CODE with Pearl and Pascal series, the A STORY OF PATIENCE & FORTITUDE series, and more.
Josh has written a comprehensive “Guide to Writing Picture Books” that’s available for free on his website’s Resources for Writers section.
For more information about Josh, visit him at JoshFunkBooks.com and on social media at @joshfunkbooks.
by Hope Lim
We all need a quiet moment to connect with ourselves and our ideas.
The idea for SOURGRASS came to me in an unexpected way. I was sitting quietly in my backyard and spotted a single stem of sourgrass poking through the tiniest crack of our fence. Its green leaves were in our yard and the rest of the stem and roots were in our neighbor’s yard. I smiled at the delightful and whimsical sight, then started to wonder why it chose to grow that way, and if there was a reason for it to appear on a day when I was feeling anxious about all the changes in life.
Within that quiet moment of watching and wondering, I noticed how that single stem of sourgrass seemed to embody so much hope and possibility by growing through the fence, a wall of separaton, connecting the two yards. I gladly took it as a sign of hope from nature telling me everything would be okay.
For days, the image of that sourgrass stem and the feelings it evoked stayed with me and inspired me to create the first draft of SOURGRASS. For several months, SOURGRASS went through countless revisions and eventually developed into a story about two best friends, Sofia and May, who turn the ordinary into the extraordinary until May’s moving away changes everything. Then I received feedback that gave me pause. It questioned whether I had gone deep enough with my story in terms of creating an emotional arc.
I gave myself a week break and sat down in front of my computer with the latest version of SOURGRASS. I still remember myself walking into the scene where Sofia was left alone in her yard after May’s departure. Her feeling of emptiness was acute, and I asked myself what made Sofia feel that way and what she would have wanted during a time of difficult change. Within that quiet moment of rumination, the image of the single stem of sourgrass which evoked a sense of hope washed over me. I wanted to plant the sense of a hopeful return in the story. And sourgrass was a perfect vehicle as it reliably returns every spring and has resilience as a wildflower. I decided to make sourgrass a central part of the friendship.
During this second phase of re-writing, I remembered one afternoon when sourgrass returned to me. In hindsight, I would say it was a serendipitous encounter, for it inspired me to create the wild field of sourgrass in the story. I veered off from my running routine and decided to go down a new path. Within moments, a field of sourgrass flowers appeared in front of me, and I stopped, awed by the yellow flowers dotting the entire field under the shimmering sunlight. I felt as if the single stem of sourgrass grew out of my backyard and spread all over the wild within a few weeks to reassure me with a message of hope. And I was there alone in the field until I was ready to run home.
In SOURGRSS, Sofia and May venture out of their yards and find a wild field of sourgrass. This discovery that they make on their own is significant, for it enables them to expand their horizons like good friends do for each other and create shared memories that help them stay connected through a trying time. I love this image of the two friends looking at their discovery together, and how the brilliant Shahrzad Maydani captures them cinematically as if they are standing at the threshold of something amazing.
In our lives, many things happen or come to us in an unexpected way, often catching us off guard. I find that ideas come to us serendipitously and often lead to the beginning of a story. If I hadn’t gone outside that day when I was feeling uncertain, I wouldn’t have seen the single stem of sourgrass. If I hadn’t decided to take a new path, I wouldn’t have found the field of sourgrass flowers. What made these encounters fulfill their potential were the quiet moments I gave to myself to connect with them. In those moments, I re-imagined SOURGRASS to be a story where Sofia learns to live in hope and keep her trust in May by connecting with sourgrass, a symbol of their friendship.
In today’s endless stream of information and constant stimulation, we need to slow down and find time to stay quiet with ourselves more than ever. I can assure you that in those quiet moments with ourselves, our breath, emotions, and characters, and with anything that catches our eye, ideas can come to us, revealing deeper meanings, and inviting us to start a story and finish the journey of making it into a book.
Hope Lim is giving away a signed copy of SOURGRASS to two separate winners.
You’re eligible to win if you’re a registered Storystorm 2024 participant and you have commented only once on today’s blog post.
Prizes will be distributed at the conclusion of Storystorm.
Hope Lim is a children’s book author from South Korea and now lives in San Francisco with her family. When she is out on her daily run, she finds quiet moments to connect with nature and her story ideas.
SOURGRASS will be released by Beach Lane Books/S&S on March 26, 2024. Hope’s other books include MOMMY’S HOMETOWN, and I AM A BIRD by Candlewick Press, and MY TREE by Neal Porter Books/Holiday House. You can find Hope on Instagram @hopelim_sf or HopeLim.com.
by Chana Stiefel
Hello, Storystormers! This post is about YOU and I. I know, grammarians, you want to say YOU and ME. But please bear with me. Today’s challenge is to play with Point of View (POV). As Mary Kole writes in her craft book WRITING IRRESISTIBLE KIDLIT, “POV is the lens through which a story is told….If you think of the story’s narrator as a camera, where is the camera?”
Our POV options are first, second, or third person: I, You, or He/She/They/It/.
(See? YOU and I!) Let’s start by brainstorming a story idea told in first person: Hand the camera over to a person, place, or thing and see things through their POV.
This can work for both fiction and nonfiction. My next picture book is an autobiography. But it’s not about me! It’s about my co-author Barrington Irving, who broke records as the youngest person and first Black man to fly solo around the world. I’ve worked on this story for about eight years. Initially, I subbed it in third person, but received a plane-load of rejections. Then I thought back to my children’s years in preschool and how their favorite thing was imaginary play. They loved to line up chairs and pretend they were flying an airplane. And I thought, why not tell Barrington’s story in first person, with the reader in the co-pilot seat? Thankfully, Barrington was on board! The first lines read:
“I’m a dream chaser. A solo flier. A world-record breaker.
I’m Barrington Irving.
People said I’d never make my dreams come true.
But I powered through! Want to know how?
Buckle up! Flight controls…check. Fuel…check. Electrical power on. Cockpit door locked. Start the engine. Ground control, ready for takeoff.
Let’s fly!”
See how a first-person narrator can draw in the reader? Stay tuned for LET’S FLY: BARRINGTON IRVING’S RECORD-BREAKING FLIGHT AROUND THE WORLD, illustrated by Shamar Knight-Justice, coming from Dial/PRH on October 15, 2024. Enjoy this sneak peek!
Here are some other recent books told in first person:
A RIVER OF DUST: THE LIFE-GIVING LINK BETWEEN NORTH AFRICA AND THE AMAZON by Jilanne Hoffman, illustrated by Eugenia Mello (Chronicle Books, 2023). The first lines:
“I am dust, the dust of North Africa. I connect continents.”
This book takes readers on a journey of thousands of miles with dust from the Sahel and Sahara, crossing the Atlantic Ocean, bringing essential nutrients to the Amazon rainforest. It’s a story about global connectedness, the environment, and how tiny particles can have a major impact…all narrated by dust!
Jilanne says, “In my first draft of A RIVER OF DUST, third person omniscient felt distant, like a travelogue. To bring the reader in closer, I wrote the second draft from a child’s perspective, but it still felt too distant from ‘the real action’ of the story. When I finally tried to write from the perspective of dust (thank you, Miranda Paul for suggesting!), I wrote several openings: quirky dust, sassy dust, silly dust, etc. before finally landing on regal, yet vulnerable, a fitting voice for a phenomenon of global importance.”
I SHIP: A CONTAINER SHIP’S COLOSSAL JOURNEY by Kelly Rice Schmidt, illustrated by Jam Dong (Lerner 2023). The first line reads:
“Made of steel,
colossal,
strong,
I ship around the world.”
Another round-the-world adventure, kids will love this inside look at a container ship’s journey transporting toys, food, and medicine. Kelly says, “I chose first person POV (and present tense) to help better convey the emotions of this gigantic journey and to let readers feel like they were taking the journey with the crew and ship. It also allowed for succinct, sparse writing that works well for creating a poetic, rhythmic feel to the text—like being on a ship.” The second book in the series, I FUEL, (Fall 2024) is the story of where our energy (both old and new) comes from—narrated by oil himself!
A few more favorites: I AM HAVA: A SONG’S STORY OF LOVE, HOPE AND JOY by Freda Lewkowicz and Siona Benjamin. This is the story behind “Hava Nagila,” (“Let’s rejoice!”) the Hebrew song sung at weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, and other Jewish celebrations. It’s told from the perspective of the song itself, depicted as a blue woman in a sari, reflecting the illustrator’s Indian-American Jewish heritage. (Now that I’ve searched “Hava Nagilla” on my computer, lots of renditions have been showing up on my feed. I love this one!)
In I AM SMOKE, by Henry Herz, illustrated by Mercè López, Smoke itself acts as narrator, telling us how it has served humankind since prehistoric times in signaling, beekeeping, curing and flavoring food, religious rites, fumigating insects, and myriad other ways. And a second book is coming soon: I AM GRAVITY! Now that’s heavy!
And remember, we can go plural too! Check out this stunning book: WE ARE STARLINGS: INSIDE THE MESMERIZING MAGIC OF MURMURMATION by Robert Furrow, Donna Jo Napoli, and Marc Martin.
As you journey through your day, consider taking on the first-person perspectives of the objects, people, or places in your path. Any story ideas come to mind?
HEY, YOU! SECOND PERSON
Now consider second person. Here the action is driven by a character known as YOU. It’s like handing the camera over to the reader and asking them to see themselves in the story (kind of like a selfie). YOU are here! My favorite mentor text for second person is THE IRIDESCENCE OF BIRDS: A BOOK ABOUT HENRI MATISSE, by Patricia MacLachlan and Hadley Hooper (Roaring Brook, 2014). The entire book is essentially two sentences, an incredible feat that begins:
“If you were a boy named Henri Matisse who lived in a dreary town in northern France where the skies were gray
And the days were cold
And you wanted color and light
And sun…”
With second-person, the reader is immediately immersed in the life and imagination of the artist Matisse. Simply sublime!
Several recent books that promote social-emotional growth use second-person to invite readers to connect with their feelings. One of my favorites is WHATEVER COMES TOMORROW by Rebecca Gardyn Levington, illustrated by Mariona Cabassa (Barefoot Books, 2023), which empowers children to manage anxiety. It begins:
“Tomorrow may bring changes that are scary, strange or new.
Tomorrow may bring chances to embrace your truest you.”
Now it’s YOUR turn! What ideas come to mind that address the reader in second-person?
COMING HOME: THIRD PERSON
Most picture books are written in third person, with the camera hovering above the scene. And that’s fine. But consider flexing your creative muscles in terms of perspective. One great example is SCHOOL’S FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL by Adam Rex, illustrated by Christian Robinson (Neal Porter, 2016). How does a new school perceive the students and all of the drama and learning that takes place inside its walls?
Another third-person creative flex: Try a dual narrative. Here’s what author Lydia Lukidis says about dual narrative in her upcoming book (April 4, 2024): “DANCING THROUGH SPACE: DR. MAE JEMISON SOARS TO NEW HEIGHTS [illustrated by Sawyer Cloud] began as a simple narrative biography told in the 3rd person. Five years later, inspiration finally struck and I found my hook: the intersection of science and dance. I wrote several more drafts but was struggling to find a way to incorporate both Jemison’s love for science and dance. It felt like two separate stories. One day, inspiration struck and I realized it needed to be written as a dual narrative. The POV never changed, it’s still third person, but it was fun to chronicle two stories relating to one person. The dual narrative eventually merges together and illuminates how art and science are both essential parts of our world.”
So people, play with POV! I hope this sparks some fresh, new ideas for YOU (& ME)! Let me know how it goes in the comments.
Chana is offering a 30-minute AMA on Zoom and a signed copy of LET’S FLY! to one lucky winner.
You’re eligible to win if you’re a registered Storystorm 2024 participant and you have commented only once on today’s blog post.
Prizes will be distributed at the conclusion of Storystorm.
Chana Stiefel is the award-winning author of more than 30 books for children. Her picture book, THE TOWER OF LIFE: How Yaffa Eliach Rebuilt Her Town in Stories and Photographs (Scholastic), has won many honors, including the 2023 Sydney Taylor Book Award, a Robert F. Sibert Honor, the Margaret Wise Brown Prize, and the Malka Penn Award for Human Rights in Children’s Literature. Chana’s other nonfiction titles include LET LIBERTY RISE: How America’s Schoolchildren Helped Save the Statue of Liberty (Scholastic) and the upcoming LET’S FLY (10-15-24, Dial/PRH) co-written with Barrington Irving, who broke the record as the youngest person and first Black man to fly solo around the world. Chana is a member of 12 x 12 and PBSpree 2024. Learn more at ChanaStiefel.com and follow @chanastiefel on Instagram.
by Bridgitte Rodguez
When I was a kid, I hated creative writing. I just wasn’t good at making up stuff. I loved reading, and getting lost in other worlds and characters. But I just could not come up with my own ideas. It was stressful and I did not enjoy it.
And now, here I am, a writer, all these decades later, coming up with my own story ideas. However, I still don’t make things up in my stories. All my stories stem from some experience I have had either recently or back when I was a kid and are grounded in the real world. I am a writer who writes what they know. Though I marvel at writers who can weave a tale from anything! Alas, this post is about using your own experiences to write informational picture books.
Informational picture books are fiction. But they are fiction grounded in reality. Where the people, places, things, events are real, or could be real. Most often the reader will come away having ‘learned’ something. Sometimes they include an author’s note or back matter or factual sidebars within the text. They come in a variety of formats.
The book is somewhat dated now, but PICTURING THE WORLD Informational Picture Books for Children by Kathleen T. Isaacs, published in 2012, states, “Nearly all informational books are about concrete subjects, things that can be seen and heard and touched, the lives of real people, places that can be visited or the stories of real events. That connection with the real world is the heart of the attraction of informational books.”
I am a huge fan of informational picture books—I like real things, I like learning about real people, real places. My debut picture book, A WALK THROUGH THE REDWOODS, illustrated by Natalia Bruno, and published by Reycraft Books, is an informational picture book.
It’s based on my real experiences of walking through the redwoods. The story itself is fictional—though, I am the “aunt” in the story. When I initially wrote the draft for this, in the summer of 2020, sitting on a bench in Central Park, the adult started out as a mom, then a dad, and then I decided I wanted to be in the story! As I don’t have children—but have a host of nieces and nephews, I figured, that could be an additional layer to the story, an aunt with their niece/nephew—we are so often not seen.
Before writing this book, I had never walked through the redwoods with my nieces/nephews, but I myself had taken many walks through the redwoods during my college years at the University of California, Santa Cruz, which is nestled among a redwood forest. So I drew upon all the experiences I had then, to fill out the story.
Additionally, as the story was taking place in a real place, the redwoods, I wanted the animals and plants mentioned to be real. Initially, the facts were included in the text, and the aunt was imparting this knowledge to the little girl. It was my editor who suggested I remove those facts and include them as sidebars, which is what happened.
The story doesn’t need to be the entire experience but the experience serves as the initial spark. Use your real life experiences to tell a story that others can experience through your words—and learn something along the way. That is what I wanted to do with A WALK THROUGH THE REDWOODS. I wanted folks, kids, anyone, who’d never seen or been to the redwoods, to get that experience of what it would be like to walk through the redwoods.
In my preparation for this post, I began researching for informational picture books. There are a ton! I am now keeping a spreadsheet of the ones I liked. But I came across some basic themes: Place, Activity, Food, Culture, Personal Stories, Nature, Emotions. Some books touch on multiple themes. Below are a few books in each of the themes that I thought did a great job. Of course, there are many, many more!
So my challenge to you for today is to mine your experiences and see which ones might make for a compelling picture book! Some experiences to think of: Food, Cultural Events, Nature Activities, Places, Emotions. Really the topics/themes are endless!
Bridgitte Rodguez is giving away a copy of her book A WALK THROUGH THE REDWOODS and a virtual classroom visit to one lucky winner.
You’re eligible to win if you’re a registered Storystorm 2024 participant and you have commented only once on today’s blog post.
Prizes will be distributed at the conclusion of Storystorm.
Bridgitte Rodguez currently lives in New York City by way of Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Santa Cruz, San Diego and Puerto Rico. When she’s not rearranging her apartment for the thousandth time, she writes books for kids of all ages mostly stemming from her personal experiences focusing on nature, family and culture. You can find her at BridgitteRodguez.com and occasionally on social media at @KidsBookWriting.
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Writing for Kids (While Raising Them) 