Hooray for Highlights!
Did you love Highlights Magazine as a kid as much as I did? Yesterday I received my regularly scheduled email newsletter from Kent Brown at the Highlights Foundation and was thrilled to find my name in it! The focus of this month's edition was "We believe in picture books." I'm so glad someone still does--enough that they've asked me to lead a workshop in September called "Writing for Little Eyes and Little Ears: Read-Alouds for Early Learners."
I love picture books because they are the perfect synthesis of sound, sight and sense (or in some cases, nonsense!). I especially love the "sound" part.
More than any other single factor, hearing poetry and stories read aloud to me made me the writer I am. I was lucky enough to grow up in a home where regular field trips to the library, bookish birthday and Christmas gifts and--yes--a subscription to Highlights Magazine were a wonderful part of life. In the beginning, my parents read to me and my six siblings, and after I learned to read, I in turn became the designated reader for my three younger brothers. I absorbed the structure and the rhythms of language, and when I started to write, I did so hearing voices in my head! Not an unusual experience for writers, but an important one--especially for those of us who write for children.
Picture books bear many similarities to poetry. Both depend on imagery, rhythm and musical devices to get their point across. Both are succinct and employ words to serve multiple purposes. Most of all, both are meant to be read aloud.... In the hands of a skilled writer, musical language can add immeasurably to meaning and overall effect.
In my workshop, you'll learn techniques for writing books for little ones that beg to be read aloud and have kids pleading, 'Read it again!' You'll learn how to make your writing sing!
I'd love to have you join me in Honesdale, Pennsylvania in September. See you then!
Picture books bear many similarities to poetry. Both depend on imagery, rhythm and musical devices to get their point across. Both are succinct and employ words to serve multiple purposes. Most of all, both are meant to be read aloud.... In the hands of a skilled writer, musical language can add immeasurably to meaning and overall effect.
In my workshop, you'll learn techniques for writing books for little ones that beg to be read aloud and have kids pleading, 'Read it again!' You'll learn how to make your writing sing!
I'd love to have you join me in Honesdale, Pennsylvania in September. See you then!
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