My humor picture book club is one of the highlights of my week. We’re all writers of picture books who want to learn to write funny – we’ve read books on humor writing, but most of the time we all read and discuss a picture book. Our chats are equal parts insightful and hilarious. View …
Every year, Vivian Kirkfield hosts the 50 Precious Words contest. Contestants write a complete story for kids with beginning, middle, and end. The challenge is that you have just 50 words to write the whole story. Every year I’m blown away by the entries. But this is my first year throwing my hat into the …
Every year I put together a list of my favorite children’s books I read that year. As in previous years, the books are broken down into age categories. This is definitely to make it easier for you to find appropriate books and not because I’m incapable of whittling the list down to something reasonable. Books …
The research is in on the first three Little Elephant books. Drumroll, please! Yes, kids learn math from fictional picture books! Specifically: preschoolers learned a significant amount of math from reading my picture books with their caregivers. If you’ve read books with young kids, you’ve probably experienced this. Kids pick up a surprising amount of …
The Research is in on the Little Elephants’ series Read More »
My picture book series, the Little Elephants’ Big Adventures, is coming out soon! (Fingers crossed that 2020 doesn’t change that.) These books were a work for hire collaboration with Purdue University that began way back in 2016. There are six books in the series (so far) and the first three will be coming out soon. …
Get Published and Paid With Work For Hire Writing Read More »
Genres carve up all the works we call “literature” and put them into helpful categories. For kids, the most helpful categories are developmental stages. So children’s book genres really equate to age categories or developmental stages. Why developmental stage? What’s interesting and appropriate to a toddler is wildly different from what would make the cut …
Yay! It’s time for me to gush about some books and convince you to buy them for every child you know. This has become a yearly tradition for me. (For five years now!) I admit – I get excited going through my Goodreads list and rediscovering the books I’ve read that year. I get less …
2019 Book Gift List for Kids at Every Age and Stage Read More »
I’ve been wanting to write this blog post for a long time to share how I use bullet journaling to help me write my middle grade novels. I’m in the middle of writing a new novel right now, so it’s the perfect time for me share. It’s also nearly NaNoWriMo time! If you’re not …
Bullet Journaling for Writers: Part 4 Writing a Novel Read More »
While I hope my book reviews move you emotionally, in this case I’m talking about a change in location. I love reviewing books for so many reasons: I love to read it fills a need for teachers, parents, and readers it shines a light on excellent books that may be overlooked it pushes me to …
Each month I spread a little love for some lovely books with monthly book reviews. March is women’s history month, so this month I’m sharing women’s history books that focus on something I love: STEM. Check out these real stories of amazing women all of whom pursued their passions and became experts in science, technology, …
