Today, I’m thrilled to have a guest post from brilliant author Cynthia Levinson, whose debut book has garnered more awards than a Steven Spielberg movie. Cynthia’s We’ve Got a Job is an stunning non-fiction book that tells the amazing story of how, 49 years ago, hundreds of children in Birmingham, Alabama, went to jail for…
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A huge congratulations to Lynne Kelly, whose debut novel Chained was just released — and I can’t wait to read it! Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Chained tells the story of 10-year-old Hastin, whose family borrows money to pay his sister’s hospital bill. To work off the debt, Hastin leaves his village in northern…
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I’ve been wanting to do book reviews for a while to spotlight the great books I’m reading, but I wanted to lean my reviews toward writing and editing and couldn’t come up with quite the right format. Until I had a sleepless night during the Texas Library Association convention in Houston earlier this month and…
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Debut author Lynda Mullaly Hunt‘s novel One for the Murphys doesn’t come out until May 10, but it has already received lots of praise, including a starred review from Kirkus. So, who better to talk writing with? I met Lynda at a Writer’s League of Texas event in March and as soon as I heard…
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As I’ve mentioned many times on this blog, writing conferences are gggrrrreeeaaatttt! (For example, the recent Austin SCBWI conference and Houston SCBWI conference, where I was nominated for the Joan Lowery Nixon Award.) The chance to hang out with like-minded people and talk about books is wonderful enough, but there’s also the seminars where you…
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As a writer, literacy is important to me, but not just because I want to make sure there’s a market for my books — literacy helps children grow. Author and librarian Jeanette Larson has been a supporter of the literacy celebration Día, which happens annually on April 30, since it was founded in 1997. So,…
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I got stuck this week. I’m revising one of my earlier novels, trying to speed up the beginning, but I couldn’t get chapter two to work correctly. The story is told in the alternating points of view of two characters, and chapter two is the all-important introduction of one of them. I had written it…
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There’s a wonderful feeling you get after a writing conference. An excitement and energy that comes from spending a day or weekend with people who are just like you. With an SCBWI event, that feeling is even more exaggerated, due to the warmth and generosity of the writers and illustrators of children’s books. I spent…
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Following up from last week’s editing checklist part 1, today I’m focusing on words that are easily confused. Some say English is one of the most difficult languages to master because it has many words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings. As writers, we need to know which to…
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When I’m editing manuscripts — my own and others — I’m often fixing the same things. All writers have little mistakes they always make, and many of us stumble over the same ones. Now, when I say “editing,” I don’t mean “revising.” When you’re revising, you’re fixing character and plot issues. When you’re editing, you’re…
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