Authors & Illustrators Wild About Kidlit!
Laura: Jacqueline, I’m honored to welcome you back to Writers’ Rumpus to discuss this deeply touching book. After reading it, I can truly say you’ve more than achieved your goal of “honoring the lives lost and the resiliency of a city that rebuilt within a year.” What was your inspiration for creating this heartfelt collection of poems?
CAROL GORDON EKSTER: Abi, your new picture book came out in May. You wrote and illustrated WOMBATS ARE PRETTY WEIRD: A [not so] serious guide
The word “taming” in the title Wild Blue: Taming A Big-kid Bike, written by Dashka Slater, is a clue to the metaphor that energizes this heartfelt story. When
I’ve been ANTicipating today for ages because it’s SMARTY ANTS’ book birthday! One of the reasons SMARTY ANTS sold is because of its many layers.
Guest Post by Lori Mortensen I love writing picture books. I especially love writing picture book endings. They’re the icing on the cake. The cherry
It’s my great pleasure to welcome Rajani LaRocca back to Writers’ Rumpus to discuss her upcoming books in 2023- three picture books (fiction and non-fiction alike) and an epistolary middle grade novel co-authored with Chris Baron.
These books are B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L-L-Y crafted with colorful endpapers and full-bleed page spreads that will leave you and your little ones feeling like you just visited the rain forest every single time you open them.
Birds Everywhere, written by Camilla de la Bedoyere and illustrated by Britta Teckentrup, is a marvelous overview of what it means to be a bird. Filled with fascinating information about the similarities and differences between some of the 10,000 species of birds worldwide, this introduction will make appreciators of young readers.
In honor of July 4th, I’ve collected a bevy of interesting, informative, and entertaining books to share with the children in your life. Kick back and enjoy!
It’s June, and you know what that means… end of school freeze pops! And, of course, it’s Pride Month. Perhaps we should have rainbow sherbet instead!
Today is a very exciting day here on the blog. I have Ryan Van Cleave here with me, who, if you don’t know, is a bit of a writing and poetry rock star. And some of what he does, you may actually not know, because he has ghostwritten many books (in addition to those under his own name) and coaches and mentors many writers behind the scenes.
It had been about a year since my debut picture book, Counting to Bananas (Flamingo Books, April 2022, illustrated by Estrela Lourenço) had been acquired. My editor, Cheryl Eissing, emailed to say her team was exploring the idea of Banana possibly carrying a picture book series. Was I interested? I had never thought about writing a sequel and, as a debut author, never imagined I would be asked to. But was I interested? Seriously? Of course I was bananas about it!
Lyn Miller-Lachmann’s YA novel Torch brings 1969 Czechoslovakia to life, a time when the country is living under Soviet tyranny. The novel has won major book awards, most recently, Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature.
A friend of mine, who also happens to be a writer, gave me a book called CREATING CHARACTER ARCS, The Masterful Author’s Guide to Uniting Story Structure, Plot, and Character Development, by K.M. Weiland, PenForASword Publishing, 2016. (Thank you Tina Oppici). Tina has been suggesting I read it for over two years. She finally handed me a copy and I’m glad she did.
WRITERS' RUMPUS 