Howdy, Campers ~ and Happy Poetry Friday! (the links to PF and to my upcoming free poetry class are at the end of this post).
TeachingAuthors' topic this round is "Something New for the New Year" and it's my turn. But there's so much happening these days...where should I begin?
About a year ago, I approached the organizers of our local politial events, suggesting that our rallies needed music. Singing together in the midst of struggle brings joy and a sense of community to marches and rallies.
I've been the "music wrangler" ever since. We named ourselves The Resisters. My favorite feedback we've gotten after a rally is: "I come to these rallies to hear the music!"
And then, in January of this year, in the midst of danger and horrific violence in Minnesota, a beautiful thing took seed. Watch Anderson Cooper's 3 min and 30 second video to witness its growth.
Singing Resisance now trains groups all over this country (called Pods) teaching us that singing is resistance.
There are 18 singers in our pod. The number of singers who are available for any one event varies widely--once there were only two--and that worked out just fine. Our pod meets at my house, and today eight singers showed up for our last rehearsal before the March 28th rally
I am filled with joy. Most of the songs we will be singing are short and easy to pick up. One of my favorite songs is longer but also easy to learn. It's called SINGING FOR OUR LIVES, written by Holly Near. Watch Holly lead her crazy-beautiful 4 minute song
Now, let's talk poetry!
I'm thrilled to announce that one of my poems has just been published in
We invite original poems that reflect on the guiding principles of democracy—such as justice, equality, freedom, civic engagement, and the common good. Please avoid references to specific elected officials or political parties, as we are committed to maintaining a nonpartisan focus.
We welcome a wide range of voices, styles, and perspectives. Surprise us with something fresh—insightful, musical, memorable. We’re looking for poems that move us: make us laugh, cry, reflect, or see the world in a new way. Both free verse and traditional forms are encouraged.
Please submit one unpublished, original poem of no more than 30 lines, including stanza breaks, formatted to fit on a single page using Times New Roman with 12 pt font. Submissions with special formatting, visual elements, or artwork cannot be considered.
A panel including a former Poet Laureate, a University of Wisconsin Professor of Poetry, and an experienced editor will review submissions and make final selections.
Chosen poems will reflect the League of Women Voters’ commitment to nonpartisanship as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion.
So! I plowed through the file of political poems I've written over the years...and also wrote some new ones.
Then I chose six of my favorite poems and sent them to five important people in my life: my husband, my sister Lyra, Teri, the president of our local League, a dear friend who is not on the same page with me politically, and my best friend Bruce (who is also a children's author and poet).
I asked them to rank the poems first to last.
In a minute I'll post the poem for you, but it might help to know that I live in California, and for years I've been part of a task force in our community to teach people earthquake safety.
Okay, here's the poem my friends voted for, which I submitted, and which was accepted:
EARTHQUAKE by April Halprin Wayland
She was ready. On the shelves in her garage were jugs of water, cans of cat and dog food, boxes of energy bars, bandages, flashlights, batteries.
She was ready. She stored sturdy shoes beneath the bed because in the aftermath, when you're running to help someone, broken glass will slash your feet.
She was ready... but not for this. Not for tornadoes, green-faced warlocks, prison guards, or flying monkeys.
Still, she was glad for the sturdy shoes beneath her bed. There wasn't time for bloody feet. She was off to save the world.
It's hard to believe that summer is already waning here in the northern hemisphere and students and teachers will soon be returning to classrooms. Today, I'm closing out our latest TeachingAuthors series. At the end of this post, I also share one of my poems and a link to this week's Poetry Friday roundup.
I've enjoyed reading all my fellow TeachingAuthors' responses to the prompt: "Share a question you often get from your students or readers." I must admit, though, that the post that most resonated with me was April's, in which she talks about someone approaching her with an idea and asking her to write the book. I, too, have received that request many times, not only from my students, but also from strangers I've met at social functions and even via email from random people who found me online.
But there's another question I've heard far more frequently from those same sources: "How do you get a book published?" In fact, when I first started teaching classes in writing for children and teens over 25 years ago, the question was frequently worded as "How much does it cost to get a children's book published?" Back before self-publishing became prevalent, many people assumed you simply paid a book publisher like Scholastic or Random House to publish your book. These same people also typically assumed that if you were a writer and not an artist, you had to hire someone to illustrate your picture book before submitting to that publisher.
If the person asking the question was not a student in one of my classes, I simply directed them to the Frequently Asked Questions page of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) website. But over the years, the answer has gotten increasingly more complicated, and the SCBWI FAQ page isn't as helpful as it used to be. Thankfully, Jane Freidman has a great resource: "Start Here: How to Get Your Book Published," that covers publishing books for adults as well as for children. The post describes three publishing paths: traditional publishing, hiring a company to publish for you, and self-publishing, and she updates the information periodically.
How about you, Readers? Do you have any questions we haven't addressed in this series? If so, please let us know in the comments.
Now for the poem I promised. Earlier this summer, I had the honor of having two poems accepted for publication at The Dirigible Balloon, a UK-based online magazine that publishes poetry for children--my first time being featured there! Here's one of them, which you can also see on their site here:
On the Launchpad (An Etheree) by Carmela A. Martino
Preparing for takeoff! I fuel up on determination so I can blast past expectations and climb skyward, higher and higher— beyond the stratosphere— to where earthly fears won’t weigh me down. Here I go— THREE, TWO, ONE …
I understand. (who's not drowning in emails these days?) But please consider taking a small bite of the article before deciding to abandon it by the side of the road.
Because if you're just now dipping your toes into picture book planet, or if you're a longtimer, hungry for a review, the article may just
blow your
mind.
She just read the article. (image by JalalSheikh21 from Pixabay)
So, first, I'll share a poem and then a drawing, illustrating what it feels like when someone says:
“I HAVE A STORY IDEA FOR YOU!”
by April Halprin Wayland
I say, “How nice. Would you like to come inside?”
Then I walk her up the concrete steps of my brain, open the door and move ten heavy boxes, pass piles of Federal Express packages, shove aside bulging brown bags with string.
We make our way to the back bedroom where I stick a butterfly net out the balcony door and catch a few more ideas as they fly past.
In the kitchen, cases of canned ideas line the worn wood floor, unpacked sacks of fresh-picked ones, smelling slightly salty, are piled on the counter.
We hold onto the paint-chipped banister to walk down the wobbly stairs of the cold, cement basement. The sulfur smell surprises. I strike a match.
“Where is there room for your idea between those wooden tennis rackets, the rusty bird cage, folded music stands and trunks of family stories?” I ask.
Crouching behind a trunk is the one that creeps upstairs at night slinking along the hallway to my bedroom. This is the one I am working on now.
“Would you be kind enough to take your idea to my storage locker downtown, near the pier?” I say, handing her a tiny tin key. “Perhaps you'll find room there.
Best to stand back as you roll up the aluminum door.”
poem (c)April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved.
drawing (c) April Halprin Wayland
Reminder: the link to Poetry Friday's host
is at the very end of this post.
For 25 years, I taught a quarter-long class called Writing the Children's Picture Book. But since the pandemic, I decided to reserve a big piece of me to help heal our world...
"We can do this!" (c) April Halprin Wayland
...and another piece of me to focus on my own writing.
envelope drawing, "Yes I can!" (c) April Halprin Wayland
And guess what? Most of UCLA Extension's 3-hour one-off classes are FREE! (And yes, they still pay us to teach).
I alternate each quarter between two classes. A few weeks ago I taught Introduction to Children's Picture Books ~ a workshop for absolute beginner; my next PB class will be in early 2026. On September 24th, I'm teaching Introduction to Writing Children's Poetry for the Big-Hearted, Brave, and Curious(my title, not necessarily UCLA's). Click on that title for more info.
So...back to the question: What is the NUMBER ONE question I get in my classes?
"This weekend I came up with an incredible picture book idea which I think--no, I know--will become an instant classic. And I'm going to let you write it! When it's written, give me the name of your agent and your editor, okay?"
Do I answer this directly? No.
Instead, I redirect them. I offer my students the following article to read.
Is it long?
Yes.
Will you be a changed reader and/or writer after reading it?
Absolutely.
Note: The Horn Book has graciously given me permission to share this article. (Unfortunately, the original article is now behind a paywall. It includes images of the books it mentions, for subscribers only. I've been given permission to offer you the article itself, minus the pictures. You might want to look the books up online or watch someone read them on YouTube as you read this article)
HALF THE STORY - TEXT AND ILLUSTRATION IN PICTURE BOOKS
(Yes, it was written many years ago, but it's still very much worth reading)
The two oldest forms of storytelling — words and images — meet and merge in picture books. A well-placed word can leave you elated or it can break your heart. Pictures can evoke peals of laughter or cries of outrage. A fundamental, some would argue inherent, understanding of both of these methods of telling stories is hardwired into our humanity. And when the two forms come together, as they do in picture books, the whole is so very much greater than the sum of the parts. At its best and most successful, the skillful joining of words and pictures is nothing short of magical.
Most picture books begin with the writer’s words, but if you take the text of a picture book out of the equation, there is still a lot to discuss. As an editor of picture books, I stand in the balance between the inspiration of the author and the inspiration of the artist. I am privileged. If these books are indeed magic, I am in the position to watch the spell being created, to see the pieces come together, and to witness the merging of two visions into one book.
Artistic style is like fingerprints, individual and revealing. No two people bring exactly the same skills or exactly the same baggage to their creative work. No text can be illustrated the same way twice, not even by the same artist.
Mother Goose rhymes are a case in point. These familiar texts are popular subjects for illustrators, in part because they are in the public domain and in effect are free for the taking.
Consider:
Hickory dickory dock
The mouse ran up the clock
The clock struck one
and down he run
Hickory dickory dock
These five lines, two of which consist of nonsense words, describe one action and open a world of possible interpretations. Think about how to represent these lines pictorially, and a flood of questions pours forth. We are told that a mouse ran up a clock. What kind of clock? A wall clock? A cuckoo clock? Is it digital? This is the twenty-first century, after all.
And then, what kind of mouse? A white one? Black one? Spotted? Anthropomorphized? One that has had its tail cut off with a carving knife?
The clock struck one. Well, one what? One mouse? The hour of one? If so, is that one o’clock in the morning? Or one o’clock in the afternoon?
And this is barely the beginning. There are also questions of technique. Do these lines call out for watercolor? Scratchboard? Melted wax? Is one panel sufficient to encapsulate the action, or do you need separate panels to show the mouse running up the clock, the clock striking one, and the mouse running down again? How do you illustrate the meaningless words hickory dickory dock?
What about the questions of the artist’s intent — or mood? Should this verse be illustrated in a conventional and pleasingly predictable manner to soothe readers by meeting their expectations? Should the clock face be melting, Dalí-esque, to give young children their first taste of surrealism? Or perhaps the mouse is a stand-in for the downtrodden proletariat forced to scurry up and down by running-dog clock makers.
Many artists have interpreted these lines, with a wide variety of results. In the hands of Rosemary Wells, this rhyme describes the bright, cozy living room of a snoozing cat wrapped in a dressing gown. He is seated in an overstuffed chair next to a grandfather clock. In this single frame, the mouse has already run onto the floor and is eating cheese while another mouse, wearing a cheery yellow frock, watches from the top of the clock.
Meanwhile, in the hands of Charles Addams, the setting is a gloomy night, out of doors. The first panel shows a dark clock tower, a pillar roughly the same shape and imposing size as the Washington Monument, located miles away from the distant town. A page turn brings us to the second panel, where the mouse who runs down the clock, just ready to leap onto the ground at the feet of a wide-eyed family, is roughly three times the size of the children that a concerned mother reaches to pull close . . .
Same text. Yet illustrations with different moods, impact, and implications. What has gone into each interpretation is the temperament, tastes, particular skills, whims, and personalities of each artist. They asked themselves the same questions and came up with vastly different answers. And there are, of course, many more options for how these same words could be, and have been, put into pictures. The variety comes from artists investing themselves in the work, reaching into their personal creativity — the unique combination of their conscious skills and unconscious ways of viewing the world.
This is a substantial part of the glory of picture books, that they inspire visual artists to share an intimately personal worldview with the audience through the lens of a particular set of words. The same sorts of questions artists ask about Mother Goose rhymes are asked about traditional picture book texts, and they evoke the same variety of responses. Even a fairly obvious text like Goodnight Moon leaves a lot of room for an illustrator. There are certain reasonable expectations about what should be depicted pictorially to accompany lines such as “Goodnight kittens / And goodnight mittens.” We may anticipate that the artist will draw kittens and mittens. But how many kittens, and how many mittens? Are the kittens asleep? Are the mittens asleep? How do you show sleeping mittens? Perhaps the kittens are sleeping on the mittens, or playing with them. Or eating them.
The choices are still there, even with the most straightforward of texts.
And illustrators are good at weighing these choices and making decisions. They rise to the challenge of creating fully realized and nuanced worlds to correspond with the writer’s words. All and all, it is a good thing they are such skilled interpreters as they are sometimes faced with a text that is less than straightforward. The experience an artist has in drawing inspiration from words can come in handy when a text contains fewer obvious illustration cues. Take the words in a spread from Ruth Krauss’s immortal A Very Special House —
MORE MORE MORE
MORE MORE MORE
MORE MORE MORE MORE
—blop blop blop—
MORE MORE MORE MORE
MORE MORE MORE MORE
NOBODY ever says stop stop stop
— a book for which illustrator Maurice Sendak received a Caldecott Honor.
Returning to Goodnight Moon, if someone other than Clement Hurd had illustrated Goodnight Moon’s great green room, we may justly suppose that the room would still have been green. But any other similarities or differences are a matter of pure speculation. And the odds of anyone choosing to illustrate the words “more more more more more more” the same way Maurice Sendak did (even with a prompting Ruth Krauss at his elbow) are slim. All picture books are branded with the personalities of their illustrators. Those personalities, as reflected in the art, are a vital and inseparable part of the experience of a picture book, and the more inspired the artist is, the more excited, the more involved in bringing a text to life an artist is, the better the book will be.
Because you don’t read a picture book. You look at a picture book. And this leads to the great inequity of the genre: a wordless picture book is still a picture book. But a pictureless picture book is a poem or a short story. And a picture book text that can be spoken aloud with no reference to the illustrations and that does not, on such a reading, lose a jot of nuance or of meaning, is not a successful picture book text. In book form, it may be an illustrated short story. And it may be wonderful, but it isn’t magic.
So, how does the writer cast her part of the spell? How does she invite an artist in? How does she create a text that allows the illustrator to invest herself in the finished book? It’s partially a matter of attitude. Even as the writer struggles for the perfect words, the awareness must be there, on some level, that once the text is out of her hands, the book is no longer solely her own. Nor is it primarily her own. Nor is it primarily anyone else’s: a picture book belongs equally to the author and the illustrator — which is why, contractually speaking, the proceeds are split evenly between the two. Because while an illustrator’s vision is crucial to the finished product, and while no two illustrators will create the same book from the same text, without that text, without the writer, there is nothing.
Obviously, the picture book author hopes her text will entice and inspire the artist. And there are a couple things she keeps in mind when creating a manuscript. First, the text must be illustratable, one that an artist can bring her vision to and enrich with visual storytelling. This means, in part, leaving room for the art to help convey the story. There are some obvious implications to this, such as not getting carried away with descriptions. It’s one thing to say,
Harry was a white dog with black spots
who liked everything,
except . . . getting a bath
and it’s quite another thing to say,
Stretched across the upper part of the doorway was a big spiderweb, and hanging from the top of the web, head down, was a large grey spider. She was about the size of a gumdrop. She had eight legs, and she was waving one of them at Wilbur in friendly greeting.
The first of these two descriptions, written by Gene Zion, leaves many questions open. We know there is a dog and we know something about his coloring, but that’s about it. We know he has black spots — two spots? Three spots? Are we talking about a Dalmatian here? A mutt? A big dog, a little dog? Long hair, short hair? The artist asks all of these questions, and Harry the Dirty Dog comes to life in Margaret Bloy Graham’s illustrations because he is the particular canine she wished to draw. Created by the author, Harry’s visual appearance convinces the reader because the illustrator has invested her own creativity and heart in him.
In comparison, E. B. White’s description of the spider Charlotte leaves much less to interpretation. We know what she looks like — the size of a gray gumdrop with eight legs. We know where she is — in a large web in the doorway. And even what position she is in — head down, one leg waving in a manner we should regard as friendly. E. B. White was writing a novel, and he understood it as part of his job to provide images through his words. He gives us the specific details we need to picture his characters and their actions. Garth Williams’s black-and-white art for Charlotte’s Web is inspired, but it is not what brings these beloved characters to life.
Meanwhile, Zion was writing a picture book. In his single, unadorned sentence of description, he tells us two definitive things: Harry has black spots, and he doesn’t like baths. The crucial second fact, an internal attitude rather than an external detail of appearance or action, is one that is hard to illustrate and can be most concisely captured with words.
But of course leaving room — or better yet, creating room — for an illustrator goes beyond not tying visual details into the narrative. Good picture book texts are often compared to poetry. The words must be chipped away and chipped away so that only the essential few needed to carry the narrative forward and give it its unique flavor remain. The writer’s job is to pare a story or experience down until the essence remains, spare and shining. The writer distills. The illustrator expands. The writer tells us there is a white dog with black spots. The illustrator shows us he has short legs, a long body, stumpy tail, pointy ears — one black, one white — woolly fur, a big black nose, and an impish look in his eyes as he schemes to avoid the dreaded bath.
While it’s easy to discuss avoiding excess description, the same sort of restraint needs to be applied across the board to every aspect of a picture book manuscript—in the depiction of actions, reactions, interactions, everything. In the course of a picture book there may well be key moments of action and emotion when the text stops and the pictures carry the reader forward with a force that is more immediate, powerful, and transcendent than a thousand words. The great balancing act of creating a picture book comes in recognizing this and understanding that it may not be clear from the text alone where the pictures need to dominate. It may not be known until the artist has dummied the book out, going through the initial sketches and fine-tuning the pacing and visual impact of the story. A picture book text is not truly finished until the picture book art is finished. It is an organic process, and the very words that inspire and inform an illustrator may become superfluous once the artist has internalized the text and returned it as drawings.
This is why writing picture books is an act of generosity and of faith. The writer is offering her work up to the rewards of collaboration, accepting that this book she has worked so hard on is about to become, for a space of time, someone else’s baby. She has to sit idly by, hopefully occupying herself profitably with other projects, for a time span that can seem to go on forever. It can be two years or more from the time an illustrator is signed up to when a book is finally published. During this time, the book is as alive for the artist and for the publisher as it was for the writer when she created it. But it is out of her hands. And it is being shaped by someone else’s vision. When the text is returned, finally, with the art in place, there is the potential for the original vision to appear altered, maybe even for the better.
And this, in turn, is why the hardest part of editing a picture book — that is to say, the scariest part of editing a picture book — is commissioning the illustrator. Editors and art directors are not naive about the importance of finding artists who resonate to an author’s text. We look hard and consider not only who has an appropriate style, but who has the right heart. We are not looking for artists who will subvert the meaning or intent of the author’s careful words. It is our charge to take the text and pair it with a visual storyteller who is moved to tell the same story through her related but different skills. We are hoping to find the artist who wants to illustrate the manuscript not because she kind of likes it and needs the money but because she takes the text to heart — as the author did when she wrote it, and as the editor did when she acquired it. We know that the best artist, the one who will make the best book, is the illustrator who brings her whole creative self to bear and is ready to interpret and expand the text in ways — and this is crucial — that are sympathetic to the author’s vision. This is not an easy task, and it is not one that any editor takes lightly.
In some ways, it is less nerve-wracking to work with authors who illustrate their own work. And many of the very best picture books are the product of a single imagination. Author-illustrators would appear to have the upper hand in this genre. They don’t have to worry so much about whether the words and pictures will end up in perfect sync — the matter, after all, is firmly under their own control — and they certainly have the ability to put aside concerns about excess wording. They may know full well what will and will not be conveyed in the art from the outset, and they are also free to adjust both aspects as they go.
But there are very few people who are equally as skilled with words as they are with pictures. William Steig was one, James Marshall was another, as is Kevin Henkes. And illustrators, by and large, are aware of this. As pictorial storytellers, artists are generally very respectful of words and of the skill of authors. They recognize that writing is an art different from their own, and that their creative strengths lie in the visual rather than the verbal.
It is vital that the writer extends the same respect to the illustrator. It doesn’t work for a writer — or an editor — to attempt to compensate for not being a skilled draftsman by telling the artist what to do. It indicates a lack of faith in the artist, and even worse a lack of respect, to pepper a manuscript with instructions for how a scene is to be conceived of and executed visually. For an author, it is comparable to the experience of being approached by a neighbor’s uncle who has discovered she writes children’s books, and who has come bounding over to share his own great idea for a picture book — only he’s not a writer, so he’ll tell it to the author, and all she has do is write it. Golly, what a wonderful opportunity! How thrilled the writer must be to be invited to use her talent and carefully honed skills to be the stenographer for someone else’s great idea. Undoubtedly the writer will be inspired to reach into her soul for her best effort for that one.
Much more effective than trying to tell an artist what to do is striving to present manuscripts that allow an artist to tap into her deepest creativity and bring everything she has to bear on the project at hand. The joy of working in picture books is the joy of discovery, the delight that comes from witnessing an artist’s original, personal, and recognizably perfect interpretations. The expert illustrator has a visual vocabulary that goes beyond anything that can be articulated or guessed at in words. She positions two figures conversing in a way that informs us of their feelings for each other, or uses an unexpected close-up of a minor character to tell us the impact a piece of news has on a community, or she gives such animation to a cottage in the woods that it becomes as welcome a sanctuary for the reader as it is for the hero. Great books come from creative freedom for both the author and the illustrator.
This can be unnerving for an author, and understandably so. When I have the chance to give frank advice to authors of picture books, this is what I say. If you are not comfortable letting an artist (and face it, we’re talking about a stranger) bring a different vision — one that you can neither predict nor control — to the book, don’t write picture books. Some people thrive on collaboration, and some don’t, just as compromise comes more easily to some than to others. There is no moral superiority on either side. As a writer, you work very hard for your words and you have a distinct and hard-won vision. It’s up to you to decide whether and how much to share. But if you love picture books and are committed to this unique, powerful, and deeply rewarding genre, I entreat you to remember how essential the artist’s wholehearted cooperation is to casting the picture book’s spell, and I encourage you to strive for magic.
Anne Hoppe is executive editor at HarperCollins Children’s Books. Her article is adapted from a talk delivered at the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults Program at Vermont College on July 26, 2003.
From the January/February 2004 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.
You read it! Yay, you! I'd love to hear what you learned from it!
Thank you, Jan, for hosting Poetry Friday atBookseedstudio
written with love by April Halprin Wayland
with a help from our zoo: our baby tortoises: Meredith and Derek,
our red-eared slider pond turtles: Lily and Little Lyle,
our 60-lb 1 1/2 year old puppy, Sadie,
and her big sister, our 8-lb 5 year old cat, Kitty,
Here we go…2023 is here and I am on a speeding train toward the book launch of my first book that sold in July of 2018. It’s been a long time coming and certainly not without its own story, replete with the twist and turn of not ending up being my debut book. So where did it all begin? Well, with my very own teaching author of course! Here’s the anatomy of a picture book sale for an author who wondered if it really could be done.
Chance meetings and serendipity have always been my friends. As a public school teacher in Los Angeles, Otis College of Art and Design allows teachers to take one free extension class a semester. In 2017, I attended an open house ready to sign up for a painting class. It had been a long time since I had explored my ideas on canvas. It was a life I had wandered away from once I had a child in 2001. I was ready to add a little pizzaz to my life, to reclaim that part of me that had slumbered through my child’s childhood. I meandered through the tables exhibiting the offerings, awake and alive to the endless possibilities of reentering a formal learning environment. And then I happened upon Deborah Nourse Lattimore and my life took a new turn.
I had been exploring writing for children and I had been putting the work in to learn the craft. It was work. Enjoyable work…but work, nonetheless. I had no intention on that day to add to my workload. I was looking for delight. But, Deborah was pure delight and I found myself signing up for her class instead of the painting class I had intended. I was about to find myself at a new level of a career that I had been dabbling with, wanting to be serious but unable to find the next level.
Deborah Nourse Lattimore is the author-illustrator of almost 40 children’s books and has taught writing for years. Her gift as a teacher is to recognize each students level and extend their reach in a non-judgmental, nurturing, and loving way. Deborah creates the conditions for good writing to occur without the student knowing that it’s happening. The growth is organic and authentic and not performative, process over product. I thrived.
After studying with her for months, I took a risk and randomly asked her if she ever recommended her students to an agent whom she was friends with. She said, “Sometimes.” I ventured further, “Would you consider recommending me?” I braced for the very real possibility of a no. But there it was. My first yes.
That December I travelled to Egypt to visit my father and extended family. Egyptian Lullaby tumbled out of me as a full-blown manuscript. I could hardly keep up. It was my love letter to Cairo.
Abigail Samoun of Red Fox Literary was still looking at some of my weaker manuscripts when Deborah encouraged me to send her Egyptian Lullaby. Abigail’s response was positive, and my timing was on point. Abi was traveling to New York that week to meet with editors. She asked if she could take my manuscript with her. It was a resounding yes from me which resulted in 5 interested editors from leading publishing houses. I naively expected an immediate sale.
Some clean up and revisions were necessary. Time passed…editors passed on it…and the manuscript stalled. Knowing that rejection is a part of an author’s lifestyle and accepting that every turn is an adventure kept me out of the trough of despair and imposter syndrome. But time kept passing and nothing was happening. Then we got a bite, but a full rewrite was required. I’m always up for the challenge and adventure so I jumped in and responded to the editor’s direction. The manuscript was significantly different, but I liked the changes and was willing to let go of the original story.
We were ready to cross the finish line when Emily Feinberg contacted us. Egyptian Lullaby seemed like it belonged at Roaring Brook Press. A different manuscript that I had in my collection of manuscripts seemed like it was better suited for the original editor whom I had worked with. So, I ended up with two sales.
As it turned out, my instincts were right. The version of Egyptian Lullaby that ended up as a picture book was the original version, illustrated by the extremely talented Hatem Aly.
Ironically, Hello, Little One: A Monarch Butterfly Story became my beautiful debut picture book
stunningly illustrated by Fiona Halliday. It unfortunately came out on May 12, 2020, just as the pandemic lockdown kicked into full swing, almost three years before Egyptian Lullaby which is due out on April 18th of this year.
It is a delight to revisit the journey of my first book and honor the people responsible for it.
This blog post is dedicated to Deborah Nourse Lattimore, my unrelenting mentor who makes me feel like I can write anything, Abigail Samoun, my amazing agent who believes in me, guides me, supports my decisions, gives me the belief that there are unlimited possibilities always possible and helps me bear all the rejections that go with this path, and Emily Feinberg, who took my original manuscript and made it into something I could never have imagined it would be.
My love for the three of you is immeasurable and my respect is boundless. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
.
Howdy Campers and Happy Poetry Friday! (links to PF, to my poem, and to my autographed Passover book are below) Shhh! Come sneak into the TeachingAuthors' Teacher's Lounge and eavesdrop as we consider what we like most about being teachers.
First, may I say that this is a somber (and an important) time to think about teachers. And students. And about how much we as a people value them. I had originally planned to post a funny poem about revision and how scary it can be, but the images were inappropriate at this time in our country.
.............................. .
Okay. Here's what I like about teaching:.
I like to perform.
But I particularly like when I am most authentic, when I forget myself, when my light reaches theirs.
Here's what I wrote to fellow TeachingAuthor Esther Hershenhorn one night:
Just home from
teaching. I was really dreading tonight's class... Revision is a hard topic to
get through--how much work it takes to revise and rewrite. But it turned out to
be a gloriously wonderful class... So I guess I'm a teacher after all. . It may have been the best class I've taught in years.Funny how that happens.
And that's what I like about teaching: the intangible, gloriously wonderful, unpredictableness of it all.
And one more thing...Passover is March 30-April 7th this year, so...
...if you're looking for AUTOGRAPHED copies of my picture book, More Than Enough ~ A Passover Story (Reviewed in the New York Times!) call the fabulous folks at my local independent bookstore, {pages} a bookstore, 310-318-0900 to pre-pay (+tax & shipping) and specify who it’s for. Gift wrapping available on request.
(If there are no indies near you, that’s another story. Then by all means buy it here.) posted with hope for teachers and students everywhere by April Halprin Wayland with help from Dropsy, a particularly contemplative goldfish in our pond.
I have been writing the same book for over 10 years.
No, I haven't been staring at a blank screen for 10 years. In fact, I've written and published another middle grade novel, five picture books and had two short stories in YA anthologies. However, with all that activity going on, My Big Novel bubbled away on the back burner. While I was writing and revising the other works, I was writing and researching MBN. This is a story based on my father's family and their survival of a major natural disaster. (I'm not going to describe it any further, because the more you write or talk about your WIP, the less you actually work on the story itself.)
Some of the characters of MBN--the Rodman family, from left, Great Aunt Beulah, my grandparents Mabel and George Rodman (the dude with the titled hat) and great-grandfather, Sam.
Life hummed along until one day, I realized there was nothing on the front burner of my writing stove. Time to move MBN to the big front burner.
I panicked. When I was worked on MBN along with something else, I wasn't aware of what a huge story I was trying to tell. It's written in free verse (something I'd never attempted before), from multiple points of view (ditto.) While my usual first readers had been enthusiastic about what they shad read, I made the mistake of showing it to an agent at a conference. He was less than enthused about it's "marketability" ("historical fiction doesn't sell.") That was enough to stop me dead in my writing tracks. Suddenly, I saw a million flaws in the story I'd been so passionate about for years. Worse, I realized the enormity of what I was trying to do. I scared myself into a big fat writer's block.
I've been blocked before. I would work on something else for awhile, and when I came back to the original book, I could blast that block to kingdom come.
Not this time. Soon after my disastrous conversation with the agent, my mother died. This was the beginning of a years long string of family tragedies, emergencies and dramas that fell to me to handle. This pretty well zapped my creative energy. Add to that, the economy was circling the drain just as five of my books were published. Library budgets were circling the drain as well. Three of the five went out of print within 18 months. In addition to blocked, frazzled and depressed, I was now demoralized. No way I could write MBN. Besides, as the agent had said "Who would want to read this?"
My lovely editors were all leaving the business for one reason or another. Any submissions I made now would be like starting all over again. So I taught my Young Author's Camps, thinking that my publishing days were over.
That's where I made my mistake. All I thought about was publishing MBN. I had forgotten about writing a story I thought was compelling (despite what that agent said). I was losing family members who had been looking forward to their story being told. They didn't care if it was published...they would've been happy with a printed copy in a three-ring binder. Worst of all, I was now teaching the siblings of my first Young Authors. Siblings who had been told the story of MBN (back when I still talked about it) and were disappointed that it wasn't published yet. I couldn't tell them it wasn't even sort of finished. Not when I spend a week (six times a summer) telling these kids they can do anything, to not listen to their inner negative critic, etc. Oh yeah, Ms Rodman, I can imagine them saying, well then how come you didn't finish your story?
At right, Sharon Rodman Blazek, one of my most important literary cheerleaders. The other person is me. We are celebrating out 18th birthdays (10 days apart.)
So with two of my most favorite people in the world (who also happen to be Rodman cousins) cheering me on, I am back at it. MBN lives. Two adult non-fiction accounts of this event haven been published in the past couple of years so I have new material to be excited about. (And I have to admit, I am now afraid someone else may beat me to the punch with this same story.) I am no longer obsessed with whether it is published traditionally or not. So many of my friends are self-publishing, that for the first time, I am allowing myself to think of that as an option.
As for the enormity of the story itself...I remind myself of Anne Lamott's book, Bird by Bird. The title comes from one of her family's stories. Anne's little brother found himself trying to write a huge report on bird life, due the next day. A report he had had three months to write. As he moaned aloud how could he possibly write this enormous assignment in one night, his father (a writer himself) answered "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird."
And so I am. And so I will. Event by event, character by character.
Don't forget to enter our Blogiversary Giveaway for the new-and-improved edition of Carmela's MG historical fiction, Rosa, Sola. For details, see last Friday's post.
More Than Enough ~ A Passover Story by April Halprin Wayland, illustrated by Katie Kath (Dial 2016)
You can see that it's still a bit shy, so here's the elevator pitch:
it's a story for 3-5 year olds
about being grateful
for having more than enough each moment
as a family prepares to celebrate Passover.
Would you like to hear the crazy, rollercoaster tearing-out-my-hair behind-the-scenes story of how a seed of an idea became this published book?
Thank you for nodding yes.
It all began in 2009, as I was hiking with my family in Kauai, Hawaii. There were a lot of steep hills. But the leaves were glistening from the morning rain, the soil was a rich red, and I was with the ones I love most. I thought of my favorite Passover song, Dayenu.
Dayenu means "it would have been enough." We sing about being grateful even if we'd only been freed
from slavery; grateful even if we'd only been led out of Egypt, etc.
To me, it's what all great religions and philosophies teach: be aware of and grateful for the blessings of the moment.
As I sang the song, I was keenly aware of the blessings of each step of the hike:
If I only hike up this rich, red dirt, that's enough;
if I only see the blue and green ocean from the top of this hill, that's enough;
if I only dive into the warm waves, that's enough...
My husband hiking Kauai
I flew home and wrote this as a free verse poem, based loosely on the form of the original song, and read it aloud at a friend's Seder (Passover meal). They liked it!
So I rewrote it as a picture book and submitted it in May of 2009 to my editor at Dial, who I'd loved working with on my last picture book, New Year at the Pier.
Here are the first four stanzas of the manuscript as first submitted:
If we had driven along the jungley road
And had not found the hiking trail
Dayenu
If we had found the hiking trail
And had not reached the hill overlooking the ocean
Dayenu
If we had reached the hill overlooking the ocean
And had not gone swimming
Dayenu
If we had dived into those deep blue waves
And had not built cairns when we got out of the water
Dayenu
My editor liked it. She liked it!
But...would I change the setting of the story?
Take it out of Hawaii? I harrumphed to myself. The whole idea was that this concept is universal. And wasn't Hawaii rich with illustrative possibilities?
But, okay. I took it out of Hawaii.
Great, she said. And she really liked the farmers market at the end of the hike. So...could I expand on that...and shorten the hike?
Shorten the hike? Argh. I guess...
I did.
Fine, fine, she said, when she got that version. Now--could you write this for three to five year olds?
Well, I can...but I don't want to. I did, working closely with my critique partner and friend, poet and author, Sonya Sones, on the rhythm of each stanza.
Wonderful, she said. And...could the family buy Passover foods at the farmers market?
Passover food? But the whole idea was to take the concept of Dayenu--of gratitude for each moment-- out of the holiday and into a regular day, I thought ferociously, pounding the carpet.
But I did. I deleted the fresh ahi tuna, avocado and mangoes and loaded the family's market bags with apples and walnuts, lilacs and honey.
Terrific, she said. And...could you have them getting ready to go to a family Seder after the market?
...okay.
Good, good! And could you cut out the hike altogether?
* * * *
April?
* * * *
April, are you there?
*Sigh.* Yes, I'm here. And yes, I said weakly, climbing down from the proverbial cliff with the support of my agent, Marietta B. Zacker--yes, I can cut out the hike.
Fabulous!, she said. We're nearly done!
Between 2009 and 2014, I worked with experts in Judaism, checking every detail and writing and rewriting the glossary. (You may know the expression, "Whenever there are two Jews in a room, there are three opinions." It's true--every fact is a matter of interpretation...)
I rewrote this 200-word story more than 34 times.
And finally, the skies cleared! Now I love this story. Thank you, Jessica Garrison, clear-eyed editor--Dayenu!
Now first four stanzas read:
We wanderthe
market
surrounded by colors— Dayenu
We buy apples and walnuts,
lilacs and honey— Dayenu
We reach through the bars to lift one purring kitten— Dayenu
He licks Mama’s nose
so she says we can keep him— Dayenu
* * * *
Dayenu! Passover is April 22nd-April 30th this year.
Here's the 37 second book trailer my son and a friend's daughter made...be sure to watch all the way to the end:
Aren't those illustrations delicious? For more, click the following:
The TeachingAuthors are six children's book authors with a wide range (and many years) of experience teaching writing to children, teens, and adults. Here, we share our unique perspective as writing teachers who are also working writers. Our features include writing exercises (our "Writing Workouts"), teaching tips, author interviews, book reviews, and more. Click here for detailed information about our "Writing Workouts." For our individual bios, please see the "About Us" page. To contact us regarding reviewing a book on the craft of writing, see the section below labeled SUBMITTING BOOKS FOR REVIEW.
Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Spirit of Christmas: 101 Joyful Holiday Stories, edited by Amy Newmark, includes a story by Carmela A. Martino
Newest TeachingAuthor Title
Playing by Heart by Carmela A. Martino (revised edition)
Recent TeachingAuthor Title
Egyptian Lullaby (Roaring Brook Press) by Zeena M. Pliska illustrated by Hatem Aly
Anthology featuring Poetry by two TeachingAuthors
Clara's Kooky Compendium of Thimblethoughts and Wonderfuzz, edited by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong, illustrated by Frank Ramspott (Pomelo Books), includes poems by April Halprin Wayland and Carmela A. Martino
Anthology Featuring TeachingAuthor Poetry
The Mistakes That Made Us: Confessions from Twenty Poets edited by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, illustrated by Mercè López (Carolrhoda Books), includes a poem by April Halprin Wayland
Submitting Books for Review
If you have a writing book you would like to submit for review consideration, then Contact us!for submission guidelines. Please be sure to include the words "Teaching Authors Book Review" in the subject.
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