Last week I received 8 children’s books made by beautiful former students, which made me crazy happy.
So I decided to celebrate CBA student’s successes by featuring them each month with my Blogfish reviews. To begin, let’s take a peek at 2 books from the Clyde the Hippo series. I love children’s books that have underlying themes that I can personally relate to. And I also love it when an author and illustrator create a powerful world in a children’s book that sucks me right in and makes me really care about the characters and believe that world. Creating a believable world is called world building even when the main character, Clyde, is a purple hippopotamus and reduced down to his most basic shapes I believe this world and want to spend time in it – and that plus the adorable characters make a compelling series. So much so, that I was sad when I finished reading the 2nd one. Perhaps it helps that Keith and Larissa Marantz are a longtime married couple in creating this beautiful Clyde the Hippo series. I don’t know. But I’m in love.
 
In the two books that Larissa sent me, Clyde Goes to School and Clyde Likes to Slide, Clyde is a young hippopotamus who struggles with anxiety, making doing anything new a challenge. Luckily, Clyde has his adorable lovey side kick, Orson, a super cute plush dog to help him in a totally passive way and he makes a gang of friends when he starts kindergarten, who also help, along with his ever patient’s mom. I’ve fallen in love with these characters as I’m sure many children will and pretty much devoured them chuckling along while reading them.
 
The writing is seemingly simple as befits 3-5 year-old children, but absolutely adorable with wonderful rhythm occasional rhymes, and puns and insider jokes for both kids and parents. Have a listen and look see in the video below.

But before we go there I want to talk  a little about writing a series. My Chapter Book and Middle Grade co-teacher (Starting June 15th 2020 right here along with a magical 3rd co-teacher from Penguin/Random House/Dial Rosie Ahmed)) Hillary Homzie just wrote a fabulous blog post on this very topic right here called The Four Principles of Series Writing.

I'm also excited to say that Hillary, Rosie and I are also doing a fab free e-class on The Essential Guide to Writing Memorable Marketable Chapter Books and Middle Grade Novels. It's all happening June 6th and will be quite spectacular. Just click here to register for that where besides learning these fabulous essentials, you can also ask any of us any questions you like as we show you how doable writing chapter Books or Middle Grade Novels can be!! 

​So after that wee public service announcement, let's get back to this adorable series for really young ones. xoxo

​Hello, I’m Barbara Bottner, author of nearly 50 children’s books for all ages. I often use my own experiences for my stories. After a hiatus of over thirty years from writing YA fiction, concentrating on picture books and work in TV and print, my new free verse novel is coming out May 19th. This novel, I Am Here Now, from Macmillan, is fiction, but it is greatly inspired by my own experiences. I’m going to share about the parallels in my life that helped me write this story.

I Am Here Now takes place in Parkchester, a planned community in the Bronx, in 1960 as we hurl toward war with Viet Nam.

There are four teen characters. There’s Rachel, Maisie’s best friend; and Rachel’s heart throb boyfriend, Gino. And finally, Richie, who Maisie relies on for friendship and a possible romance. Richie shares with Maisie his dismay about living with his father’s Viet Nam war trauma.
“Tomorrow or the next day, Richie and I will sit together and mumble our sad stories.”

The story is set in the Bronx. I was born there and lived there until the age of seven. Like my home, the Bronx was in decline and experiencing increased turbulence.

For Maisie, the tense uptown streets create a growing, urgent need to escape, as mirrored by her impossible situation with her very disturbed mother.

Like Maisie, I was always an art girl. Art spoke to me as no human could. It allowed me to see other worlds and to feel deeply connected to them. It showed me there was a way to express the pulsing, intense, uncontainable feelings I had and to turn them into something useful and lasting and even beautiful. Art sustained me and still does. Maisie is an aspiring artist and her love of painting is an important thread. It’s healing, self-realizing, and ultimately offers her a way forward.
As in the novel, I had a best friend whose mom was, for her, a challenge, but for me, a lifesaver. I always thought that was an interesting dynamic in and of itself. Kiki, Rachel’s mother, is a painter and a mentor to Maisie. This leads to trouble with Rachel who becomes jealous (and has reason to).
​
 Also, this is a sibling story. Maisie has to find a way to cherish her younger, more compliant and more lovable brother Davy, who’s secretive and dealing with his sexual orientation before being gay was even remotely acceptable. This comes out of my life as well. My brother grabbled with his orientation at a time where homosexuality was illegal and considered a curse.
​
Maisie is a troubled, desperate girl, especially when her father disappears in the middle of the night. Later on, Richie flees his situation as well. As a result, Maisie becomes a thief of sorts; first she steals into Rachel’s family. Then, finding Gino irresistible, she steals her best friend’s boyfriend.
Refusing to reach out to her father because of his abandonment, she faces off with her mother until her fate as well as Davy’s hangs in the balance.   

If you'd like to help support this glorious kidlit matriarch, buy her books here: 
https://shop.booksandbooks.com/book/9781250207692  Books N Books, Miami Florida or here:
https://www.amazon.com/Am-Here-Now-Barbara-Bottner/dp/125020769X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=I+Am+Here+Now+bottner&qid=1588539512&sr=8-1  ​

by Bryan Patrick Avery

In month two of our stay-at-home period, I’ve found myself with a bit of extra time to focus on my art. With respect to magic, I’ve been working on a new cups and balls routine that I plan to perform at my upcoming author appearances (once it’s safe to be out and around again). In the world of writing, I’ve working (struggling, really) with the beginning of my latest chapter book. 
I’ve spent the time reading the opening chapters of my favorite chapter books to see what they have in common, or what stands out. In doing so, I’ve made notes about the first chapter and have created a little exercise I’d like to share with you. I’m working on a chapter book so I used my favorite chapter books but this exercise with work with the first three or four pages of a picture book or the first chapter of a novel.
Grab your favorite two or three (or five or ten) books off your bookshelf. Read the first chapter of the first book on your stack. Now, answer these two questions:

1. What is my main character doing?
2. What happens that impacts my character?

Here’s an example:

Ellie May on April Fool’s Day by Hillary Homzie

1. What is my main character doing? Ellie May is in class participating in morning sharing.
2. What happens that impacts my character? Ellie May’s teacher announces that the students can celebrate April Fool’s Day in class.

I would suggest doing this exercise on a regular basis. This will build up a library of beginnings that you can refer back to when you’re working on the start of your own stories. In my case, comparing the first chapter of my WIP, The Disappearing Book – an Amazing Micah Mystery, to the notes a took on other chapter books, I realized that my main character was doing too many things in the first chapter. It made it difficult to focus on what was really important. This is what the first chapter looked like originally:

1. What is my main character doing? Micah is at the library preparing for his monthly magic show. He takes a break to see a 150 year magic book that has just arrived at the library. A local newspaper photographer takes Micah’s picture with the book.
2. What happens that impacts my character? Just as Micah’s magic show begins, the fire alarm goes off.

Now, my first chapter looks like this:

1. What is my main character doing? Micah is racing to the library with his twin sister and best friend to see a 150-year magic book that was donated to the library.
2. What happens that impacts my character? Before Micah can see the book, the fire alarm goes off.

Reviewing my notes on other books helped me see what was wrong with mine. Simplifying the action in chapter 1 helped me get the story on track and make for a much stronger beginning. This exercise helped me. I hope it will help you too.
Well, that’s all for this month, stay safe, and have a magical month.

I am so excited about our latest  Craft and Business of Writing Children's Picture Books  interactive e-course starting next Monday, for so many reasons. One is that I'm co-teaching with fabulous acquiring agent Allison Remcheck who is building her Picture Book client list, and one of the many other reasons is our new course assistant Bonni Goldberg who teaches writing in universities, on cruises and through her book Room to Write. Bonni will be helping a variety of ways including sharing prompts. Here's her intriguing guest post for us. Thank you Bonni.

Inspirational Sparks: Ignite Your Writing
 
No matter where you are in your career as a writer, you continually sit down to write and find out what you (and your characters) have to say. As you write, you cultivate your creativity and grow as a writer, if you pay attention.

Here are two writing studies (my word for prompts) to both inspire your writing and to show you something about your relationship to your creativity. The studies are from my book, Room to Write, but I’ve added special options relevant to kidlit writers.
 
Notice which option is most enticing and the one that is least appealing to you in each study. The former lights your creativity up and the latter is a challenge. You decide which spark to kindle. I’d love to know your choice and read your results.
 
Description:
Eat It
One of life’s greatest pleasures is the ability to taste. Salty, sweet, nutty, sour, fruity, spicy, and on and on. What is your favorite food? Your comfort food? What do you refuse to eat? Taste is a delicious place to hone your descriptive skills. Describing flavors can be as simple as listing their ingredients or as complex as portraying the way different foods and spices relate to one another.
Even more enticing can be describing the way a person tastes. By this, I don’t mean cannibalism, but rather the flavor of a person: their physical taste (such as when you kiss) or that of their personality. What flavor is your best friend? Your dog? What is your flavor?
 
WRITE only through your sense of taste. Speculate on and imagine the taste of whatever surrounds you. Without necessarily writing about food, have you or your main character experience the world as flavors. Turn all your characters into different foods.
 
Character:
Dear Abby Within each of us is the collective wisdom of our species. You can gain access to it through the act of writing. Your writing is moving when the reader recognizes a truth that resonates deeply. We read and write as often as a way to remember as a way to learn.
Writing stories and poems calls on us to hear the voices of reason, passion, advice, and concern conversing inside us all the time. It isn’t that we need a quiet place to work so intently we won’t be distracted, but that we need quiet to concentrate on listening to one voice at a time. Each voice from our collective wisdom is also the kernel of a character developing.
 
CHOOSE a situation in your life about which you need advice. Start by presenting the problem. Listen to the different internal voices that respond. Then home in on one voice at a time and transcribe the advice verbatim. Use one or more of these voices to develop characters. Or have one or more of your characters write to Abby (or someone else) for advice and receive an answer. Or have a character experiment with receiving three very different advices and see what happens when your character tries each one of them.