I'm a Guest Blogger on The Children's and Teens' Book Connection

Picking the Right Words for a Picture Book by VS Grenier

First, let me say there are four types of picture books.

Story Books: Most of us grew up on this traditional picture book. This type of picture book is by far the most popular and is usually fiction based. You will have a series of events with strong character development. Story books tend to have more text on each page vs. other types of picture books.

Concept Books: This type of picture book helps to promote a child’s understanding. You see this type of picture book for toddlers or as a “My First” book series. These books can be fiction or nonfiction and have very few words. The illustrations tend to be the focus.

Novelty Books: A great example of this type of book is The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. This picture book relies on some short of gimmick to tell the book’s story.

Modern Picture Books: This type of picture book is a lot like the story picture book, but uses both the illustrations and context to tell the full story. This type of book is more character driven vs. plot driven and is supported by the illustrations.

Now here is where the hard part comes in. All picture books have one thing in common. The format, also known as the page count (24 to 32 pages). This tight format only gives you so much room to tell your story. It is important your wording also keeps the readers interest, the pacing of the storyline and can stand on its own. A great way to do this is by making a mock-up of your book. This way you can have a sense of how your story will build and flow and if you have under or over developed your characters. I did this with my book, Babysitting SugarPaw.

To read the full post visit http://childrensandteensbookconnection.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/world-of-ink-tour-babysitting-sugarpaw-by-vs-grenier/

Comments

Interview Friday with Author Maggie Lyons

Maggie Lyons was born in Wales and brought up in England before gravitating west to Virginia’s coast. She zigzagged her way through a motley variety of careers from orchestral management to law-firm media relations to academic editing. Writing and editing nonfiction for adults brought plenty of satisfaction but nothing like the magic she discovered in writing fiction and nonfiction for children. Several of her articles, poetry, and a chapter book have been published in the children’s magazines Stories for Children Magazine and knowonder! VS: I want to thank you for being my guest here on The Writing Mama today, Maggie. To get things started can you share what you do to help balance your writing life with your family life? Maggie: Very fortunately for me, I’m retired and my son left the nest some time ago. That doesn’t mean I have no other commitments, of course. In fact, I’m very busy as a freelance editor, but I do have the privilege of being able to control m...

Interview Friday: Author Sands Hetherington

Sands Hetherington credits his son John for being his principal motivator. Sands raised his son as a single parent from the time John was six. He read to him every night during those formative years. He and young John developed the Crosley crocodile character in the series during months of bedtime story give-and-take. Sands majored in history at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) and has an M.F.A. in creative writing and an M.A. in English from UNC-Greensboro. He lives in Greensboro. VS: I want to thank you for being my guest here on The Writing Mama today. To get things started, Sands, what do you do to help balance your writing life with your family life? Sands: Hi Mama and thanks for having me over. Actually, my family life was part of my writing life. I was a single (male) parent of a six-year-old son. We always did bedtime stories. One night John invented a red crocodile named Crosley for an after-lights-out companion. This evolved directly into...

Interview Friday with Author L.R.W. Lee of the Andy Smithson MG Fantasy Series

From an early age L. R. W. Lee knew she wanted to write a children’s book. Her imagination for such a book was cultivated early on as her family didn’t have a lot of money. She and her older brother were encouraged to use their imaginations to entertain themselves. And use them they did – climbing trees and tree forts, using a quilt for a matchbox car city, making puppets and putting on shows, and much more and her creativity and imagination grew. VS: Mr. Lee, I want to thank you for being my guest here on The Writing Mama once again. You recently just released the 2 nd book in our series, which is a great accomplishment. What do you do to help balance your writing life with your family life while writing a series? Lee: I’m spoiled in that regard. I founded, built and sold a multi-million dollar company in January 2012. Since then, I’ve been free to write full time so I don’t face quite the challenges as many authors. I write while everyone is out of the house and ...

VS Grenier ~ Award-Winning Author, Speaker & Podcaster

Search This Blog