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The Blogettes with Marcie Colleen and Humor for Kids

6/28/2013

2 Comments

 
Our society loves to laugh.

People flock to comedic movies. 

Many schedule time to watch their weekly sit-com (sometimes even petitioning the “powers to be” if the show gets canceled). 

Some stay up way past my bedtime to watch Saturday Night Live each weekend.

And the number one answer when asking what people look for in a lover: “someone who makes me laugh.”

So, I wonder, with all of this love for and value placed on laughter, why don’t we teach humor to our kids?

We focus on teaching our children to be good citizens, to read, write, perform math, be physically active and to have manners.  Why don’t we also teach them how to have a sense of humor?  Clowning classes for kiddies as part of the Core Curriculum?

I know it sounds silly.  But I am actually not trying to be funny.  I’m dead serious. 

5 Benefits of Laughter and Humor

1.      Laughter is definitely good medicine.  It has been proven scientifically that a multitude of illnesses and disease, including high blood pressure and depression, can be combatted through laughing.  But don’t just take my word for it, check out http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/give-your-body-boost-with-laughter. Have that daily dose of funny to keep mentally, physically and emotionally healthy.

2.     Laughter brings people together.  It’s a connecter.  Share a laugh with someone and friendships are created, family bonds are strengthened. 

3.     Laughter levels the playing field.  When you share a laugh with a child, you are both on the same level.  You have a joke, sometimes an inside-joke.  And kids love to be treated like an equal.  Of course, jokes must not be at another’s expense.  But telling stories of your own embarrassing moments can also help dissolve shame and embarrassment in others.

4.     Laughter reduces stress.  Think kids don’t have stress?  Think again!  Many of us cannot remember what it was like to have absolutely NO SAY in what you do, where you do it and when.  Imagine constantly being told what to do while also developing your own personality.  Yeah….stress.

5.     Laughter diffuses anger.  In a world that talks too much with hostile words and fists, teaching our kids to “find the funny” and lighten up a bit is invaluable.

I just love silly, wacky, and quirky picture books.  I love to read them to myself, share them with others and even write my own. 

I am done feeling inadequate because there is no “higher agenda” in my stories.  Silly picture books that make kids and adults laugh-out-loud create bonds, instill a love of reading and share the gift of entertainment. 

My picture books don’t set out to teach a lesson.  My books, and the books I tend to enjoy the most, put FUN FIRST.  And you know, perhaps that is more than enough. 

Quick, find a kid.  Grab a funny, laugh-out-loud picture book.  And have a blast!  You will be teaching a world of good.

2 Comments

Children's Developmental Stages with Mira

6/21/2013

4 Comments

 
Learning about different developmental stages can be very helpful for authors  and illustrators to know about age appropriate subject matter and styles that what might appeal to kids at different ages. These notes are primarily from my twin sister Leonie Reisberg who is a children’s development expert and an art therapist. I’ve dragged her into the 21st century with her Facebook page, so if you’re feeling generous, please “like” her page here https://www.facebook.com/pages/KidsLink/318898001530875?fref=ts. Also, if you want to run a child development question by her on the page, I’m sure she’d be happy to answer it for you.

Now before we start, just a quick disclaimer, developmental stages are different for all kids. Albert Einstein didn’t start talking until he was 3, so please take these as general benchmarks. Also kids are developing at a much faster rate these days so that is another factor to consider. But here they are:

Ages 0-1
  • The oral phase –

  • Physical mastery begins – grabbing fingers, sucking on them

  • 4 months begin teeth, 3 teeth by 1 year old

  • 6 months, sit up, 9 months, crawl back and forth

  • 1 year standing up, 15 months walking and running by 2 years backward and forward

  • Babies introduced to shapes and faces and feelings (before they’re mobile)

  • Absorbing everything around them – read and name things with pictures

  • Simpler concrete ideas and black and white or high contrast images work best 
with geometric or graphic shapes with high contrast.

  • Important to read and name things with pictures

  • Board Books, tactile books, repetition, one syllable words

Ages 2-3

  • Becoming mobile

  • Discovering movement, moving toward the desire for greater independence – 
some separation

  • Major leap in acquisition of language phase.

  • Curious about everything

  • Conscious awareness of new friendships, esp. parallel play

  • Toddler’s early beginnings of learning right from wrong-very beginning of learning 
guilt.

  • Concrete simple human play on language, rhythm, rhyme and repetition

  • Often follow along page to page pointing to various pictures. Very verbal young ones will begin describing, elephants, for example, pointing and saying “what’s happening to the elephant,” I like the elephant or bad elephant

  • Toilet training, language acquisition

  • By 2 years, children know approximately 20 words, by 3 years, 20-30 words & 
short sentences

  • “I don’t want that.” “Give me that” “Go away”

  • Aware of gender and who’s in family

  • By age 3, start reciting numbers. Most kids love counting

  • By age 3, gender identity becomes important. Toilet training usually happens 
between ages 2-3. Interest in self-control over body, e.g. Everybody Poops 4-5

  • Pre-School

  • Begin differentiating between kids and naming behaviors they like or don’t like

  • Start independently choosing their friends and consciously choosing this over 
that to get the messages they want.

  • Repetition in books, pre-school very creative, very process oriented rather than 
product. It’s more important for them to create rather than how it looks.

  • Sensory exploration

  • Finger-painting, drawing, play-doh, etc.

  • Learning fine motor skills and gross motor skills, monkey bars, slides etc

Liking more plot with age appropriate plot driven stories that are a little bit scary “Where the Wild Things Are”, “I’m Going on a Bear Hunt” “Three Little Pigs” up to age 6

Latency Phase 5-11 years

  • Begins with starting school around age 5

  • Already able to use scissors

  • Developmentally they enter school still maintaining an egocentric point of view 
and slowly develop an awareness that they are group members as well as 
individuals. They want to be valued for both sides.

  • They are asked to take on more responsibility and put some of their own 
individual needs aside. Structure, rules, and routines are introduced as a way of explaining that everyone must follow these so that groups can coexist without chaos

  • Latency is learning to belong to a group

  • Trade off giving up some of the selfishness

  • Beginnings of letting go of some of the self-orientation for the good of the group

  • Either family, community or school

  • More complex plots than before. Start learning about societal expectations.

  • Start playing board games where there are rules and structure with winners and 
losers and consequences if you cheat

  • Asked to take turns, share, follow directions, start having homework competition 
and growing awareness of difference and social ranking and own qualities

  • Start becoming more aware in general e.g. “Teacher’s Pet”

  • Around age 7 start addition, writing sentences, learning about holidays, making cards for everything, begin to read

  • 7 & 8 year olds become much more aware of who’s fitting in and who isn’t – You’re smart, you’re good at sports – everyone is trying to find what they’re good 
at for positive recognition. This is when kids join sports teams, boy or girl scouts, 
etc.

  • Become aware of popularity – who is, who isn’t

  • E.g. Enid Blyton Secret Seven, Famous Four, Diary of a Wimpy Kid (7,8 & 9)

  • Start becoming more conformist, more stereotypical, goes on until about 10

  • Age 10 kids are getting bigger, earlier physical development, girls getting 
periods, etc.

  • Body awareness, Girly Magazines, Girl Friendship

  • 9 onward – Same sex groups – very important.

  • Starting to look at teenagers as role models

  • Changing bodies, mimicking, posturing 
For more information, visit this virtual treasure trove of children’s developmental information http://www.kidspot.com.au/discoverycentre/section+506+0—1-years.htm

  • 
To find out even more specific information about children’s developmental stages, Google these terms:
    Biological development in children
    Psychosocial development in children
    Cognitive development in children
    Language development in children
    Motor development in children
    Artistic development in children

4 Comments

Marsha Diane Arnold and the 7 Year Drought

6/14/2013

18 Comments

 
             Writers are no strangers to droughts. There are droughts when good ideas don’t come. Droughts when the right words won’t come. And there are droughts when no one wants your stories.

            All those droughts are painful, but that last type of drought can break your heart and your spirit. It almost broke mine. But fear not, dear readers/writers, this story has a happy ending.

            My blog for the Picture Book Academy is supposed to be about character-driven stories. I’m going off-course a bit to share some news and encourage all of us to persevere. If there’s a character here, it’s me; I’m not as interesting or determined or spunky as my book characters, but I hope you’ll stay tuned for a bit of drama and that happy ending.
Picture
Jamichael Henterly and myself
Picture
Karen Risken and myself


It took years to find an editor who loved my first story as much as I did. That editor was Diane Arico.  Heart of a Tiger, illustrated by Jamichael Henterly, won a sweet little award, the Ridgway, for Best First Book by a New Author. It was a nice beginning.

            Diane was my champion during my early career. When she moved from Dial to Golden Books to start a new picture book line, I went with her. Golden published three of my books. Then Golden went bankrupt, Diane left publishing, and Random House acquired Golden’s publishing rights; many authors’ books were unceremoniously “shredded.”  That was a major detour, but my drought was yet to come.

            I still had a strong connection to Dial, but I didn’t click with another editor there until along came the marvelous Karen Riskin, who I adore. Karen was my editor for two of my most beloved books, Prancing Dancing Lily (illustrated by John Manders) and Roar of a Snore (illustrated by Pierre Pratt). But before Roar of a Snore hit the bookstores, Karen left for the even more important work of raising a family. That was a big bump in the road.

            Treasure those editors, writers. They really are golden.

            The drought started after what seemed a precursor to good things. I had two picture books published in 2006 from two top publishers, Dial (Penguin) and Abrams. Two picture books in the same year. That had never happened for me before.      

            But this was also the beginning of big changes in children’s publishing. Technologies were changing, cultures were changing, economies were changing, publishing houses were changing. Successful editors, some with their own imprints, were being let go. E-books and apps were squeezing traditional books. Mid-list authors were getting squeezed too.

            As writers we all have similar tales of woe. Our manuscripts get “close;” an editor loves our story but acquisitions turns it down. But since my first book was accepted, I had never had such a dry spell.
Picture
Picture
The years passed. It didn’t feel like 5 or 6 or 7.  It felt like I’d been wandering in the wilderness for forty years, like the Israelites. Like them, I’d be there, “until the whole generation that had done what was evil in the Lord’s sight was gone.”  Except I was the whole generation and the Lord was the Big Six (soon to be the Big Five).

            I had sold my first 11 books on my own, with no agent. But with drastic changes happening in publishing and more and more houses closing their doors to unsolicited manuscripts, even from published authors, it was time for an agent. Luckily, I found the wonderful Karen Grencik of Red Fox Literary.  She loved my stories. She was heaven sent.

            But something was wrong. My manuscripts were still getting “close;” an editor would love my story, then acquisitions would turn it down. ETC.  I’d been down this road alone, in misery. Now, I was just sharing the misery with someone else.

            Then suddenly and unexpectedly, as happens in a drought, it began to sprinkle.  In early April, Karen emailed there was interest in one of my manuscripts. (Blah. Blah. Fine. This had happened before. No reason to get overexcited.) But it didn’t take long for the sprinkle to turn into a shower. There was lots of interest in my manuscript.

            And in the end, it was a downpour. The drought had ended. The offer that could not be refused came from the man who emailed: “It’s utterly simple….and simply brilliant.”  My story was bought in a pre-empt, in a two-book deal from the exceptional Neal Porter of Neal Porter Books. There is simply no better way in the children’s publishing world to end a 7-year drought.

            I cannot tell you what the “simply brilliant” story is, but I will tell you it is minimal text. Really minimal text.  It’s a story that came to me in images, in the early morning hours. My art notes show the way to a character-driven story. Indeed, there are many characters driving the story, into oblivion and back again. I cannot wait to see how the illustrator paints them.

            So now I am rejuvenated, regenerated. I feel a bit like a phoenix rising, like a cicada chirping my song after being underground, unseen, for 13 or 17…or 7 years. Detours, bumps, and droughts come to us all. But, writers, if we persevere, if we have faith, if we keep “showing up,” we can survive the drought and rise like a phoenix.

                  After a 7-year drought, my story is now…to be continued.
  Marsha  Diane Arnold is an award-winning children’s book author with a heart of gold. Besides writing, she enjoys visiting schools internationally, nationally, and through Skype, sharing her love of books and writing through presentations and writing “funshops”.  In 2008 Marsha was honored as one of seven artists invited to be part of Sequoia National Parks Foundation’s Artists in the Back Country, the only children’s author ever invited. The program’s goal is to rekindle the American tradition of enhancing public appreciation of our natural world through the arts. She shares her adventures in the high Sierras at www.earthsvoices.com

When not creating imaginative worlds and wacky characters at her home in northern California, Marsha also enjoys traveling the world, scuba diving, and (like her characters) always trying new things.  To learn more about Marsha’s books or to contact her, visit www.marshadianearnold.com. You can also find out more about Marsha’s phenomenal home school e-course on Writing Wonderful Character-Driven Picture Books at http://www.picturebookacademy.com/writing-character-driven-stories.html


18 Comments

The Picture Book Blogettes: First Fridays with Maya Gonzalez

6/7/2013

0 Comments

 
Picture
Becoming a Children's Book Publisher: Crafting Socially Relevant Children’s Books as a Way of Life

I surprised my own self recently when I wrote:
“I fell in love with creating books. As an artist & writer, as an educator and especially as a parent, I found them to be the perfect vehicle to support our children and pass on to them important lessons about social justice and a strong sense of self.”
It’s the “fell in love” part that surprised me. I never put it like that before, but it’s true. I have a deep heart feeling about creating children’s books. It’s a feeling so large it takes me just beyond my ability to verbalize. It has a lot in common with falling madly in love and staying there. That’s how I know making children’s books is one of my favorite mediums.

I have worked with children’s book publishers for many years, and for the time being, still do, but I do not personally consider myself a children’s book illustrator/author.  I am and always have been an artist. So that’s how I relate to book making.

I am deep into process. After many years of creating art, design and words for books with fantastic editors Dana Goldberg and engaging publishers like Harriet Rohmer, my partner and I suddenly decided to open our own press—basically because we realized we could. We saw the immense potential present in creating books by and for the people with technology close at hand. Using relatively, easily accessible platforms, like Print-on-Demand, together with the abilities we each had, we understood that we could affordably create kickass books.

Much like art, we didn’t really have a choice. We began making books. We just had to. Claiming Face, Gender Now, I See Peace.

Being publishers gave us total creative power. Sometimes as artists and authors, our vision is more far reaching than traditional publishing and current trends allow. But with this kind of independent publishing muscle, we have the freedom to dream as big as we want! We can revision, switch up, freee the whole game; publishing-wise, social-wise, political-wise, spiritual-wise, you name it! We can literally change the face of history through books like never before!

So that’s exactly what we decided to do. We decided to change history. OK, well, not technically, but sort of.
Picture
Our current project is called EVERYBODY’S HISTORY: the people. united. It’s our most ambitious project yet.

Here’s the official spiel:
EVERYBODY’S HISTORY is a revolutionary new series for ages 9-12 that transforms the way we tell history. The series begins with our first three heroes, Harriet Tubman, We’Wha and Charley Parkhurst . Chosen with an eye on social justice, mixed with a fierce sense of fun and the intention to expand our vision to be more inclusive of all communities, each book explores the life and times of the characters through story, anecdotes, quirky facts, art, and unique activities. Books come grouped in three, interconnected through themes for deeper exploration. Our first set is unified by the Civil War era, gender expression and race. Everything about these books allows for a different kind of commentary on history for our kids and a different kind of engagement and relevance to current events.
Picture
Projects like these are acts of mad love. We educated ourselves about publishing and crowd funding to support our BIG DREAMS and now we’re learning more about outreach. There’s a lot to this level of artistic responsibility. We’ve had to seriously look at what’s important to us. Clearly, at this stage, it’s not the money. It is about books like these being available and STAYING available. It’s about being free. It’s about knowing that we can do anything. It’s about showing our kids and other talented and amazing book makers that the sky’s the limit right now! We can dream as BIG as we want!

We can CHANGE HISTORY!

If you are interested in becoming an independent publisher yourself, here's a 23 page packet from Reflection Press's Radical and Relevant Children’s Books Mini-conference:
http://www.reflectionpress.com/radicalbooks
Maya Gonzalez is largely self-taught. She has illustrated over 20 award-winning multicultural children’s books and written 3 with, not an end in sight! Her fine art has shown internationally and appears in numerous books about the contemporary Chicano Art Movement including on the cover of Living Chicana Theory and Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Art: Artists, Works, Culture and Education considered to be "the Bible of Chicano/a art." Ridiculously creative, she’s probably making art as you read this or thinking about making art if she’s driving a car or using the stove. And one of her ultimate passions is inspiring others to create books, because she believes that creating children's books has the potential to be one of the most radical things you can do!

If you'd like to know more about Maya, you can visit her children's book website, her fine art website, or learn more about her work inspiring others to join her in changing the world at www.schoolofthefreemind.com or www.reflectionpress.com.
0 Comments

    Meet the Friday Blogonauts

    First Fridays will feature Bryan Patrick Avery, published writer , man of mystery, and professional magician among other things.

    Second Fridays will feature  awesome multi-award winning author Marsha Diane Arnold who will be writing about character-driven and/or nature-based books and/or anything she likes :)

    Third Fridays
    will feature independent Aladdin/Simon & Shuster editor Emma Sector who has helped bring many books into the world.

    Fourth Fridays will feature the great Christine Taylor-Butler who has published over 70 award-winning fiction and non-fiction and nonfiction books including the acclaimed new middle grade series - The Lost Tribes.

    Fifth Fridays will feature the fabulous Carl Angel award-winning multi-published Illustrator and graphic designer.


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  • Home
  • WRITING
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      • 2023 Mastering Graphic Novels Registration
    • Craft & Business of Writing Childrens Picture Books
    • The Chapter Book Alchemist
    • New!! Middle Grade Mastery Instant Access
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