Exciting news! My picture book biography about Jane Addams, DANGEROUS JANE (illustrated by Alice Ratterree) releases from Peachtree Publishers September 1st — just in time for Jane’s birthday on September 6th! So I’d like to celebrate Ms. Addams by sharing a bit of my research, interviewing illustrator Alice Ratterree, and offering a …
I think every picture book author has a mental list of picture books he or she loves SO MUCH that the writer wishes he or she had written them. My personal “why-couldn’t-I-have-written-that” list has five books on it.* And one of them is Carolyn Crimi’s BORIS AND BELLA, an absolutely …
Recurring elements are one of my favorite features in picture books. Picture books are shorter affairs, so the writer has to fit a plot into a tighter-than-normal space. To make the story hang together and feel like a coherent whole, there often are words, phrases or themes that repeat throughout …
I’m a fan of the TV show “Chopped.” That’s the one where contestants are given baskets full of odd, seemingly unrelated food items and have 20 to 30 minutes to combine them into a delicious dish. I watch enough episodes to be able to predict what the judges will say …
I picked up “The Blue Whale” by Jenni Desmond because I was curious to read the story behind this beautiful and intriguing cover. And the book does begin as a story with “Once upon a time, a child took a book from a shelf and started to read.” This …
The summer before my freshman year of high school, I decided I wanted to be a sportswriter. I devoured the sports section of my local newspaper, The Oshkosh Northwestern, and the sports section of The Milwaukee Sentinel. I also read Sports Illustrated magazine and books by Frank Deford, the sportswriting king …
I’m choosing to talk about John, Paul, George & Ben today – what I suppose has to be classified as an oldie, but goodie, since it was published in 2006 – only because I keep running into newish writers who aren’t familiar with it. In my opinion, every writer (and …
Okay, so what are the odds? I post once a month on Picture Book Builders, and this month my turn fell on September 8, the release date of my newest book, The Inventor’s Secret: What Thomas Edison Told Henry Ford. (By the way, my son calculated the odds of this …
First things first. My last post included a giveaway, so I’m happy to announce that the WINNERS of the newest Explore My World books from National Geographic Kids are: Baby Animals – Katy Duffield Nighttime – Kathy Doherty Congrats, you two, and a big THANK YOU to all who entered. …
On a recent school visit, a Media Specialist asked how I thought the Common Core State Standards have affected children’s authors. Mmmmm … interesting question. As most everyone knows, the Common Core State Standards emphasize the importance of students reading nonfiction books (called “informational text,” which includes biographies and autobiographies, …