The magic of picture books is how they tell a complete story in few words. To help that happen, picture book authors often use repeating elements. Repeating elements are words, phrases or sentence structures that occur several times in the story. They provide a strong framework and help the plot …
I’ve been thinking a lot about picture book structure lately. In fact, I wrote two Picture Book Builder blog posts about it not so long ago. Here’s one. And, here’s the other. I’ve become a firm believer that the best picture books have a very solid structural foundation that elevates …
This is a follow-up to a post I wrote in August about the importance of picking a structure for your picture book and committing to it. It might be helpful to read that post first, if you haven’t. After my last post about why it’s so very important to consciously …
I’ve read a lot of picture book manuscripts — written by current and aspiring authors — during the past year. Some have been from conference critiques I’ve done, some from contests I’ve helped judge and some from mentorship programs or writing seminars I’ve been part of. And, recently, as I …