by Joyce Audy Zarins Also posted at WritersRumpus.com. “Armstrong-Ellis fills the page with slime and sludge, and careful readers will even spy monster-themed parodies of works from da Vinci, Cassatt, George Rodrigue, and other artists.” —Publishers Weekly Picture books by Carey F. Armstrong-Ellis are filled with hyperbole and delightfully disgusting detail. Her most recent book, […]
This post is #4 in a series. The earlier ones are here, here and here. This article also appears on another blog, here on WritersRumpus.com. We see hundreds of excellent children’s books each year published here in the U.S., but what about those published in other countries? The rest of the world is producing books […]
I originally posted this article on WritersRumpus.com. As one of my heroes, the Dalai Lama, once said…“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.â€Â Let’s each one of us be the mosquito!  —Lin Oliver This week Lin Oliver, co-founder and Executive Director of the international Society of […]
also posted on WritersRumpus.com most visuals by author Here’s something for writers and illustrators to consider: the painful physical effects of your work. Don’t laugh. I kid you not. You might think that the arm in the photo (mine, actually) looks pretty healthy. After years of making welded steel sculpture using all sorts of heavy […]
There are two aspects to each story— what it is about and how it is written. Three young adult novels I’ve read over a span of two weeks excel in certain intriguing elements of style – meaning the tools used to write them. We Were Liars by E. Lockhart, I’ll Give You the Sun […]
The process of writing or illustrating a children’s has often been compared to having a baby. That gestation-to-birth time is partly the work of creating the story and pictures, but that’s just the beginning. Here is a fantastic explanation of the actual publication timeline, written by tween and teen author extraordinaire, Jen Malone. Bookmark
This is a reblog from www.writersrumpus.com Post #5: Morris Award Finalist Blog Tour Week YALSA’s Morris Award honors the year’s best young adult novel by a debut author. The Morris Award winner for 2014 will be announced at the upcoming ALA 2015 Midwinter Meeting in Chicago. Writers’ Rumpus is honored to host a week of […]
Post #1: Morris Award Finalist Blog Tour Week YALSA’s Morris Award honors the year’s best young adult novel by a debut author. The Morris Award winner for 2014 will be announced at the upcoming ALA 2015 Midwinter Meeting in Chicago. Writers’ Rumpus is honored to host a week of posts about the Morris Award Finalists. […]
Today Kristine Carlson Asselin revealed the cover of her debut YA novel, Any Way You Slice It, about Penelope Spaulding, who uses hockey as a great escape from her parents’ restaurant. As her confidence on the ice and her commitment to the Rink Rats and someone named Jake Gomes grows, she finds it harder and […]
This article is a post I wrote for the fabulous Writers Rumpus blog today, September 30th. While recently reading John Green’s Looking for Alaska, I was surprised by the shape of the story. I’ll get to that in a minute, but it reminded me of other authors who played with the structure of their narratives. […]
By Joyce Audy Zarins Like daffodils naturalized in the woods, all Native Americans, immigrants from everywhere in the world, people with various abilities, talents, handicaps, and preferences populate our American nation. We are all in this cross-pollinated garden together. Our stories should reflect that biodiversity. By “naturalized diversity†I mean that the characters in our […]
 What is Writers Rumpus? Marianne Knowles, who runs the writers critique groups I belong to, started a blog for children’s book writers and illustrators that is chock full of great information in twice weekly (Tuesdays and Fridays) by our crit group members and guest posters. I’ve written a few of these articles myself. One, titled […]
In support of the wave of demands for diversity in children’s books that went viral on social media – #WeNeedDiverseBooks – today, read this Publisher’s Weekly article. It seems so obvious that every person on this planet is a citizen of this world and part of one big, messy, beautiful family. I won’t apologize for […]
This article also appears at writersrumpus.com. While your book is percolating in your mind, in revisions or sketches, or under the scrutiny of your crit group buddies, you can explore ways to build your publishing credentials. Magazines and other media can be valuable, shorter-term ways to get your work seen. Here’s a more-or-less “out there†[…]
Registration for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators New England regional conference opened today at 10:00 AM. Already two thirds of the slots are full. If you plan to attend, what are you waiting for? If you are a writer or illustrator of books for children and young adults, this conference will stimulate […]
Have you ever considered that all of the books written in English in libraries, bookstores, on e-readers and in your own home are really only comprised of 26 letters arranged in different ways? Our alphabet is an amazingly simple set of symbols. And what writers do with them is magic. This morning I posted an […]
This simple story with bright, clean artwork will appeal to any very young child impatient for Christmas to arrive. But is Little Chicken anxious for the reason you think? Or does Little Chicken have a plan to make someone else happy? The hints begin on the title page and continue under Little Chicken’s funny, egg-shaped […]
When Paul Czajak invited me into Jody Jenson Shaffer‘s Children’s Writers’ Blog Hop I thought – why would I not? The plan, as you may already know, is that each author answers the same four questions on his/her own blog, then invites three others to do the same. Like the branching of a tree, the ideas […]
Millions of people are familiar with the acronyms used in texting every day. w@ (What?) you say? u r ok (You are okay.)  ne1 ne sec (Anyone, any second) can see it’s a word puzzle where some are obvious, others not so much, or are acronyms as learned symbols. But texting isn’t as new as […]
If you’ve ever wondered why the average picture book is usually thirty-two pages long, take a look at this post I did today for Writers Rumpus. Bookmark