Drawing upon the knowledge gained by her hard-earned success, author Bobbie Hinman shares her valulable advice on creating and marketing picture books that children will love. Her topics include: understanding what children want to read; balancing the combination of words and pictures; making an impact with your cover; choosing an illustrator, editor and graphic designer; learning the secrets to successful book fairs and book signings; planning school visits; seeking reviews and awards; launching your book with a blast; and many tried-and-true, creative marketing tips.

For fans of How to Babysit a Grandpa comes a tongue-in-cheek story that is a step-by-step manual for putting your monster to bed. If you have a monster that won’t go to bed, don’t bother asking your parents to help. They know a lot about putting kids to bed, but nothing about putting monsters to bed. It’s not their fault; they’re just not good at it. Read this book instead. It will tell you what to feed your monster before bed (it’s not warm milk), and what to sing to your monster (it’s not a soothing lullaby), and what to read to your monster to send him off to dreamland in no time (the scarier, the better). Just make sure you don’t get too good at putting monsters to bed—or you might have a BIG problem on your hands! Praise for Zachariah OHora: “The text is pitch-perfect, and the art is its match.” —Chicago Tribune (Wolfie the Bunny) “Picture books with hip, quirky illustrations that are not just funny but also have plenty of heart are hard to find. The stylish My Cousin Momo by Zachariah OHora has it all.” —The Boston Globe (My Cousin Momo) [set star] “OHora’s acrylic paintings are the heart of this tale. They clearly show everyone’s feelings . . . and there are brilliant bits of humor and whimsy.” —School Library Journal, starred review (Wolfie the Bunny) “OHora could paint stones in the street and make them funny.” —Publishers Weekly (My Cousin Momo)

First Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book provides comprehensive advice on what to write about for children, how to write it, and how to present the work professionally for publication. It includes an easy-to-use picture book layout plan and tried and tested examples of title sheets and covering letters. It also includes everything a writer needs to know about the international picture book market and how to sell to agents and publishers. This new edition contains advice on enhancing your text for the ebook market.

Recommended by writing instructors and award-winning authors. This volume emphasizes an aspect of children's picture books that has not yet been thoroughly investigated: structure. Both concept books and picture storybooks employ very distinctive structures that, once mastered, can be applied to any picture book you wish to write. When so many of the best picture books employ the same structures, it is important to analyze these structures, understand why they work, and learn how to incorporate them into your own writing. This volume helps you do all that. You will see that no matter how carefully you labor over the tone, word choice, plot, character, setting, theme and style of your picture book, you must have a thorough grasp of its structure if you wish your book to succeed. Indeed, you will find that an expert command of structure is the key to writing a successful children's picture book.

Children's books are very special, and have introduced millions of young people to the joys of reading. Single mums and top celebrities alike have penned best-sellers promoting the virtues and values for children to lead happy, healthy lives. There are many different ways that a children s book can be written, from the simplest rhyming picture books to more involved novella stories. Whatever your story may be, publishing it is within your grasp. The book provides a complete overview of everything a prospective children s writer needs to complete and publish his or her own children s book. You will start by learning how to recognise the market that your book's style fits. You will learn the basics of the children s book publishing industry and how it is fundamentally different from that of the rest of the publishing industry. You will learn how to choose the right publisher or print on demand printer for your book and how to start preparing the package, with special consideration for illustrations and other aspects of your book that might change the overall presentation. You will learn what morals and values publishers and readers look for in good children's books and what you should expect in a publication deal. You will learn how to build a relationship with your editor, what to expect in revisions, and how to learn the process of selling your book. You will learn how to gain publicity on your own and what you can do to build your book into a long-term career. For anyone that has ever written or is considering writing their own children s book, this book will provide the information and resources you need to get published.

This book provides comprehensive advice on what to write about for children, how to write it, and how to present the work professionally for publication. It includes an easy-to-use picture book layout plan and tried and tested examples of title sheets and covering letters. It also includes everything a writer needs to know about the international picture book market and how to sell to agents and publishers. This new edition contains advice on enhancing your text for the ebook market.

WRITING FOR CHILDREN **UPDATED New Chapter: How to write a metafiction picture book** Kids and books—they just go together. Children’s picture books are an addictive passion! You love reading to kids and wish that you could read one of your own. Now, you can make that dream a reality. Writing illustrated picture books for children can seem deceptively simple. You must tell a complete story in less than 1000 words, and less than 350 words is best. Characters grow and change and keep the reader emotionally invested, while also giving the illustrator great possibilities for the art. It’s a balancing act all the way around. Writing teacher and author of over a dozen children’s books Darcy Pattison explains the craft of writing children’s picture books. You’ll learn why format matters, how to appeal to kids and parents, how to write a read-aloud friendly book, and much more. Pattison provides tips on writing, editing, and marketing your manuscript to publishers. If you like detailed writing guides, plenty of contemporary examples, and practical worksheets, then you’ll love Darcy Pattison’s guidance on creating your own masterpiece that will fascinate generations of young readers.

Taking a dialogic approach, this edited book engages in analysis and description of dialogic discourse in a number of different educational contexts, from early childhood to tertiary, with an international team of contributors from Australia, Finland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The chapters focus mostly on dialogic face-to-face discourse, with some examples of online interactions, and feature insights from educational linguistics, particularly the work of Michael Halliday. While the contributors come from a range of theoretical backgrounds, they all share an interest in language in use and engage in close analysis of transcripts of naturally-occurring interaction. Taking inspiration from Alexander and other theorists, they employ a fine-grained and analytic approach to the exploration of their data. The authors make use of the linguistic tools and models of language in society, in order to examine the turn-by-turn unfolding of the interaction. The authors relate their insights from disparate forms of linguistic analysis to elements of Alexander’s (2020) dialogic framework, situating the discourse in its contexts and discussing the pedagogical implications of the linguistic choices at play. In presenting this work from a range of situations and perspectives, the authors strive to demonstrate how dialogic discourse plays out in educational contexts across the world. The book aims to foster further research in this direction and to inspire educators to explore dialogic discourse for themselves. It will be of interest to a wide audience, including literacy researchers, linguists, teachers and teacher educators, as well as graduate students.