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by Matt Forrest Esenwine
The great thing about Storystorm is that it spurs so many ideas! It also encourages one to simply brainstorm, without worrying about whether those ideas are any good or not. And it’s a very low-pressure sort of thing, as the honor system is pretty much the only rule we need to follow. It’s also free!
(OK, so apparently there are LOTS of great things about Storystorm.)
Ironically, even though Tara shares daily inspirational posts on her blog during Storystorm, it’s still sometimes difficult to nail down just where an idea came from. Take, for example, this particular success story:
My first poetry anthology!
During the last few days of Storystorm 2019, I was kicking around some possible concepts for a poetry collection. As someone who writes a lot of children’s poetry and whose picture books like “Flashlight Night” and “Once Upon Another Time” are very lyrical and poetic, I’m always on the lookout for new themes and angles around which I can develop a collection.
I have no idea if it was Lindsay Bonilla’s post about wild animals or my friend Diana Murray’s post about actively creating your own inspiration rather than waiting for it (something I wholeheartedly endorse), but the concept of rainbows and all the myriad forms they take suddenly came to me.
When I say “forms,” I don’t just mean normal rainbows, refraction, etc. I began thinking about creatures like the rainbowfish and rainbow lorikeet as well as natural wonders like Yellowstone’s Grand Prismatic Spring and the Rainbow Nebula in Orion. So I immediately jotted down “rainbow poetry collection” onto my Storystorm list as #30 out of an eventual 32 ideas.
A couple of weeks later, I was researching rainbows and discovered things I never knew existed like the Rainbow Mountain of Vinicunca, Peru and the amazingly-colored and bad-tempered peacock mantis shrimp.
It occurred to me that since rainbows are symbols of inclusion, hope, and pride…I should try to be as “inclusive” with these poems as possible! So rather than a collection of my own poems, I began my quest to develop my very first poetry anthology. Over the years, I’ve had nearly 40 poems published in numerous anthologies but never created one of my own! Who did I need to talk to first?
Lee Bennett Hopkins.
The late award-winning, Guinness record-holding anthologist had compiled more than 126 poetry anthologies over the course of his career, and having had the honor of working with him on several of them, I wanted to seek out some professional guidance.
So I called him up and we chatted on the phone at length about the rainbow poetry anthology, other projects we were working on, and life in general…and when we hung up, he had provided me with a great deal of advice and support, and had agreed to even contribute a poem.
Little did I realize it would be our last phone conversation.
Six months later, Lee’s friends received the news he had passed away. He never knew that a mere eight months later, in April 2020, I would receive an offer from Eerdmans Books for Young Readers to publish my proposed anthology. But I had done the legwork, research, and organization he had suggested and had a long list of poets and subjects ready to put this book together!
I couldn’t be more grateful to Lee for his guidance or to Tara for the environment she’s fostered that allows for the birth of ideas like this in the first place. I firmly believe that every idea opens the door for every idea that follows – so even if you think one of your Storystorm ideas isn’t worth writing down, WRITE IT DOWN, ANYWAY. That winning concept you’ve been struggling to find could be just another idea or two away!
It’s taken more than six years of contemplation, inspiration, and perspiration, but “A Universe of Rainbows: Multicolored Poems for a Multicolored World” finally arrives April 1! And because creativity begets creativity, I have a second anthology with Eerdmans, as well – and several others that are out on submissions.
Who knows where this new chapter of my career will lead?
Dunno.
But I do know it started with Storystorm!
A voiceover talent and commercial copy writer, Matt can be heard on commercials, animation, and corporate videos from Maine to Florida, from California to New Jersey, from the U.K. to Dubai. Over the years, Matt has had several adult poems published in independent collections, including the Tall Grass Writers Guild’s “Seasons of Change,” “The Licking River Review,” and the Donald Hall tribute anthology, “Except for Love” (Encircle, 2019), among others. In 2012, his poem, “Apple-Stealing,” was nominated by the Young Adult Review Network (YARN) for a Pushcart Prize.
His debut picture book, “Flashlight Night” (Boyds Mills Press, 2017), received a starred review from Kirkus and was selected by the New York Public Library as one of the Best Picture Books for Kids of 2017. You can find his children’s poetry in numerous anthologies including Lee Bennett Hopkins’ “School People” (Wordsong, 2018) and J. Patrick Lewis’ “The National Geographic Book of Nature Poetry” (National Geographic Children’s Books, 2015), as well as “Highlights for Children” magazine. Matt lives in New Hampshire with his wife and children. Visit him at MattForrest.com.
Matt Forrest Esenwine is giving away a signed copy of “A Universe of Rainbows” to one lucky winner.
You’re eligible to win if you’re a registered Storystorm 2025 participant and you have commented only once below.
Prizes will be distributed at the conclusion of Storystorm.
Today we’re revealing the cover for ONCE UPON ANOTHER TIME, illustrated in bright, bold colors and soft edges by Andrés F. Landazábal. It immediately takes me back to another time in picture books! The tale, co-written by Charles Ghigna (a.k.a. Father Goose) and Matt Forrest Esenwine, came to be via a blog post and a subsequent comment. Let’s have the authors share the story behind the story…
CHARLES: The genesis for this book began when I posted the first 9 pages of the manuscript on my Father Goose blog, along with a summary of the entire picture book. Here’s a link to my original blog post. Matt responded with 4 stanzas and some great ideas for the narrative. I was surprised how compatible our styles were and how easily our ideas fit together. I began submitting the finished manuscript about the same time Matt did. I submitted it to Beaming Books via Submittable and he submitted it via #PBPitch, a Twitter event that connects picture book authors with editors and agents. And it worked! Beaming Books picked it up! Matt and I were thrilled with our editor’s choice of illustrator, Andrés F. Landazábal, whose colorful style perfectly captures the lyricism of the text.
MATT: Bouncing manuscripts back and forth was actually very educational for both of us, seeing what each other thought of the other’s writing, as well as discovering new perspectives and ways of describing things. And by the way, tenacity was the name of the game with this book: the manuscript went through nearly 15 revisions and more than 25 different publishing houses before our editor at Beaming Books told us she loved it and wanted to buy it! Even with Father Goose’s name attached to the project, it took an awful lot of persistence and positive energy to get our book to this point! I’m not only thrilled about the illustrations, I’m also thrilled that I got to write a book with my friend, Father Goose himself, the inimitable Charles Ghigna! Seeing our names together on the cover is a real treat.
The illustrations are a real treat, too! Thanks, Charles, Matt and Andrés!
ONCE UPON ANOTHER TIME will be released by Beaming Books on August 18, 2020.
Charles Ghigna – Father Goose® lives in a tree house in the middle of Alabama. He is the author of more than 100 award-winning books from Random House, Disney, Hyperion, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, Abrams, Charlesbridge, Capstone and Orca. His poems appear in magazines from The New Yorker and Harper’s to Cricket and Highlights for Children. For more information, please visit: FatherGoose.com.
Matt Forrest Esenwine has published nearly 30 children’s poems in anthologies like The National Geographic Book of Nature Poetry (N.G. Children’s Books, 2015) and Construction People (Wordsong, 2020), as well as Highlights for Children magazine. His nationally-acclaimed picture book, Flashlight Night (Boyds Mills Press, 2017) was selected by the New York Public Library as one of the Best Picture Books of 2017. More information is at MattForrest.com.
Andrés F. Landazábal is an illustrator and art director based in Colombia. His work has appeared in animation films, tv shows and print companies. Andrés’ love for drawing and painting was instilled at a young age reading classic illustrated children’s books. He is represented by The Bright Agency.
Writing for Kids (While Raising Them) 