Podcast

February 16, 2021 In Podcast

Podcast – Stephen Swinburne

Through humor and storytelling, veteran nonfiction author Stephen Swinburne takes us into the heart of narrative nonfiction storytelling with solid tips and tricks for writing STEM and STEAM manuscripts, including what editors are looking for in today’s market. Learn to use “story” to create quality, informational books that hook young readers on topics of science, technology, engineering, art and math as well as people and history.

Stephen Swinburne holds a BA degree in Biology and English from Castleton State College in Vermont. He has worked as a ranger in a number of national parks and is the author of over 30 children’s books. His extensive travels to faraway lands such as Africa and treks through Yellowstone have all influenced his book projects. Steve’s recent titles include, Lots and Lots of Zebra Stripes (Boyds Mill Press), Sea Turtle Scientist (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), and Safe in a Storm (Scholastic), about animals finding cozy places to stay safe and warm. Steve visits nearly a hundred schools a year across the United States as well as many international schools.

In this episode, enjoy Stephen Swinburne’s delightful take on how to write engaging and entertaining STEM and STEAM books for young audiences.

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Katie Davis - procrastination and your first 1000 readers

February 2, 2021 In Podcast

Podcast – Your First 1000 Readers

How can you actually connect with your first 1000 readers? Get your books into more hands? It’s a challenge, especially when 3,500-odd books are published every day. In this episode, Katie Davis shares how she’s used her platform and marketing techniques to sell almost a million copies of her traditionally published books and launch two books at #1 on Amazon. She’ll reveal how you can follow the same steps and get your books in the hands of more readers!

Katie Davis is the author/illustrator of over a dozen traditionally published books for children (picture books, middle grade, and young adult novels). She edited and self-published How to Write a Children’s Book and How to Promote Your Children’s Book, both debuting at #1 on Amazon.

Katie is a co-founder of Picture Book Summit and is the former director of the Institute of Children’s Literature and its sister school, the Institute for Writers, where, as of this writing, over 470,027 people have taken college-level writing courses and learned to write for both children and adults.

In this episode, Katie gives her insider tips for finding your first 1000 readers and keeping their attention.

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January 19, 2021 In Podcast

Podcast – Rukhsana Khan

How do you tell a story about a specific cultural paradigm and make it universally accessible? Award-winning author Rukhsana Khan shows us how to do just that as she walks us through her Golden Kite award-winning book Big Red Lollipop. Don’t miss the behind-the-scenes stories of this beloved picture book as Rukhsana explains her inspiration and how her story doesn’t just show the dynamics of an immigrant family, but also reveals how the universal struggle of sibling rivalry is common to all cultures.

Award-winning author Rukhsana Khan was born in Lahore, Pakistan and immigrated to Canada as a toddler. She turned to books to escape her childhood bullies, but never imagined she could write herself; writers were white people. She finally wrote her first book when she couldn’t find a job as a bio-chem technician. Thirteen books later, Rukhsana has made a name for herself as an author, presenter, and storyteller. Her picture book Big Red Lollipop was named one of the 100 Greatest Children’s Books in the Last 100 Years by the New York Public Library.

In this episode, Rukhsana Khan explains what a cultural paradigm is, why every picture book has one, and how you can use that paradigm to engage your reader with your culture.

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December 29, 2020 In Podcast

Podcast – Mac Barnett

So, you want to make a picture book. Mac Barnett is here to share how the unique form of the picture book works to pull the reader in using a variety of techniques.

Mac Barnett is a New York Times-bestselling author of stories for children. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages and sold more than 2 million copies worldwide. Mac’s books have won many prizes, including two Caldecott Honors, three New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Awards, three E.B. White Read Aloud Awards, and the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award. Mac’s international awards include Germany’s Jugendliteraturpreis, China’s Chen Bochui International Children’s Literature Award, and Italy’s Premio Orbil. His picture book collaborations with Jon Klassen have brought us the beloved books Sam & Dave Dig a Hole and Extra Yarn. Mac reads a different a picture book each Saturday on his Instagram show Mac’s Book Club Show Book Club.

In this episode, Mac Barnett shares how the layout and format of a picture book informs how the reader will engage with the story on different levels. Even the trim size of a book changes the way it’s read.

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Laura Backes - Picture Book Summit Podcast

December 15, 2020 In Podcast

Podcast – Purpose Without Preaching

So, how do you impart a meaningful takeaway for your young picture book reader without it feeling like a lesson? In Purpose Without Preaching, Laura Backes illustrates how to write picture books with purpose that don’t preach at kids but trusts them to find the kernels of truth hidden within your story.

Laura Backes publishes Children’s Book Insider, The Children’s Writing Monthly. Laura and her husband Jon Bard co-own WritingBlueprints.com. She has edited and critiqued thousands of picture book manuscripts. Her credits include Best Books for Kids Who (Think They) Hate to Read (Random House) and articles for Writer’s Digest, The Writer and Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market. She was also the technical editor of Writing Children’s Books for Dummies. Recently, you may have seen Laura on her weekly Kidlit Distancing Socials.

In Laura Backes’ Picture Book Summit workshop Purpose Without Preaching, she gave actionable tips for infusing your manuscript with a message and how to get kids to hear that message without tuning you out. In this episode, we share some highlights from her talk.

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December 1, 2020 In Podcast

Podcast – LeUyen Pham

In this episode, we’re pleased to bring you award-winning author-illustrator LeUyen Pham.

LeUyen is the author and/or illustrator of over 100 books for children including The Boy Who Loved Math, A Piece of Cake, and the Caldecott Honor Book Bear Came Along. Books she’s illustrated include the best-selling series The Princess In Black written by Shannon and Dean Hale, Grace for President written by Kelly DiPucchio, and God’s Dream by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. You may also recognize LeUyen Pham’s work in the Freckleface Strawberry series by Julianne Moore and the Vampirina Ballerina series written by Anne Marie Pace. Vampirina Ballerina is now a Disney Channel series. Her own books include Big Sister, Little Sister, A Piece of Cake, and The Bear Who Wasn’t There.

How should an author communicate their vision to the illustrator? Should you include art notes in your manuscript? How do you decide where the page breaks should fall in your text? In this excerpt from her Picture Book Summit presentation, LeUyen Pham answers these questions and shares some of the behind-the-scenes creation of Bear Came Along as part of a broader conversation on why authors should trust their illustrator and keep art notes to a minimum. (Spoiler alert! Trusting your illustrator allows magic to happen!)

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Picture Book Summit Podcast Paul O. Zelinsky

November 10, 2020 In Podcast

Podcast – Paul Zelinsky

Today we bring you beloved author-illustrator Paul Zelinsky.

Paul Zelinsky grew up in Wilmette, Illinois. He is the son of a mathematics professor father and a medical illustrator mother. Although he drew compulsively from an early age, he didn’t know until college that being an author-illustrator would be his career.

While attending Yale College, Paul enrolled in a course on the history and practice of the picture book co-taught by Maurice Sendak. This experience inspired Paul to point himself in the direction of children’s books. His first book appeared in 1978, since then he has become recognized as one of the most inventive and critically successful artists in the field.

Paul received the Caldecott Medal for his illustrated retelling of RAPUNZEL, as well as Caldecott Honors for three of his books: HANSEL AND GRETEL, RUMPELSTILTSKIN, and SWAMP ANGEL. He also known for crowd-pleasing favorites such as THE WHEELS ON THE BUS and Z IS FOR MOOSE.

In this portion of his presentation from Picture Book Summit, Paul talks about what people (including editors) are looking for in a picture book, what makes a picture book work, and how structure in a picture book impacts a book’s layout and pacing.

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October 20, 2020 In Podcast

Podcast – Alvina Ling

In this episode, we hear from Alvina Ling. Alvina is Vice President and Editor-in-Chief at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, a division of Hachette Book Group, where she has worked since 1999. She edits children’s books for all ages, from picture books to young adult. Books she’s edited include Caldecott Honoree Little Star and the Big Mooncake by Grace Lin, Horn Book Award Winner Mr. Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown, Dave the Potter by Laban Carrick Hill, illustrated by Bryan Collier, Shark Vs. Train by Chris Barton and Tom Lichtenheld, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin, and The Land of Stories series by Chris Colfer. You can find her on Twitter at @planetalvina and on Instagram at @alvinaling.

In this excerpt of Alvina’s Picture Book Summit presentation, she talks about what makes an editor want to publish a manuscript, how marketing moments influence editor decisions, and how a manuscript works its way through the acquisitions process. Enjoy this peek behind the publishing curtain.

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September 24, 2020 In Podcast

Podcast – Adam Rex

Today we are thrilled to bring you Adam Rex and his brand of humor. Adam wrote and/or illustrated all the books you like including the New York Times bestselling Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich , the New York Times bestselling School’s First Day of School, and also a number of titles about which the New York Times has been strangely coy.

As the E.B. White saying goes, ““Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested. And the frog dies of it.”

Adam Rex dives into analyzing humor anyway in this snippet from his Picture Book Summit presentation. Whether he’s editing a tweet or creating a new picture book, Adam has a way of making us laugh with his combination of words pictures. Join us as Adam digs down deep into word choice and the rules of humor in creating a funny picture book.

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September 8, 2020 In Podcast

Podcast – Jane Yolen

In today’s episode, we’ll hear an excerpt of Emma Walton Hamilton’s interview with the legendary Jane Yolen at Picture Book Summit. Jane is the award-winning author of over 365 books for children and young adults, including the Caldecott Medal-winning book OWL MOON, THE DEVIL’S ARITHMETIC, and the bestselling series HOW DO DINOSAURS SAY GOODNIGHT? She is also a poet, a teacher of writing and literature, and a reviewer of children’s literature. She has been called the Hans Christian Andersen of America and the Aesop of the twentieth century. Her books and stories have won the Caldecott Medal, two Nebula Awards, two Christopher Medals, the World Fantasy Award, three Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards, the Golden Kite Award, the Jewish Book Award, the World Fantasy Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Association of Jewish Libraries Award among many others.

In this interview with Jane, she discusses how she manages to be so prolific (she prefers the word “versatile”) and how she finds and develops the unique voice of each of her books.

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Podcast

Podcast – Stephen Swinburne

Podcast – Your First 1000 Readers

Podcast – Rukhsana Khan

Podcast – Mac Barnett

Podcast – Purpose Without Preaching

Podcast – LeUyen Pham

Podcast – Paul Zelinsky

Podcast – Alvina Ling

Podcast – Adam Rex

Podcast – Jane Yolen

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