How to Write a Picture Book--A Guide for the Already Rich and Famous

Make sure you have an important lesson in mind before you start writing. The main purpose of books for kids is to teach them something. It’s not enough just to tell a good story. Lessons can be about the hard stuff like learning to cope with disappointment or learning to deal with jealousy.

They can also be about the lighter stuff like learning to think well of yourself even when you’ve behaved stupidly.

At the very beginning of your book, you may want to include a letter to your readers that explains the lesson you’re about to teach in your story. Just in case they don’t get it. Make sure it’s something profound, like “Growing up can be fraught with emotional land mines” (Couric, 5).

One way to sneak your lesson into the story is to give your adult characters deep, meaningful dialogue: “I know you are sad, / but you couldn’t feel good if you never felt bad” (Couric, 14).

Picture books are pretty short, so it shouldn’t take you more than an hour or so to write one. If at all possible, write the story in rhyming verse. Do something like this: “Mom, I’ll see ya! / I’m heading to tryouts to be the next Mia!” (Couric, 7). Or maybe like this: “I have so much to tell you / before you slide into home plate. / I already know I love you / as I sit right here and wait” (Crystal, 9). Don’t worry too much about rhythm. (Poets call it meter.) What do kids care about that stuff?

Another thing kids won’t notice is clichés in your language, so feel free to sprinkle them throughout your story. Use expressions that’ll be easy for your illustrator to show such as “curled up like spoons” (Curtis, Tell Me Again, 6), “sleep like logs” (Curtis, 8), and “green with envy” (Madonna, 15).

It’s fine to use two similar words, like envy and jealousy, interchangeably. They mean practically the same thing anyway.

If you want to get really fancy, make your rhymes predictable: “I’m gonna like me / when I fall and get hurt / and mess up my elbows / in pebbles and dirt” (Curtis, I’m Gonna Like Me, 18).

Finding just the right words is hard. You might want to use the same first line over and over to give yourself a break from having to think up more of them. Author Jamie Lee Curtis used “I’m gonna like me” 20 times as the first line in her four-line stanzas. It’s also the title of her book. Think of how much work she saved. It’s okay to fudge sometimes too and just use words to make the rhythm come out right. You may want to use a clever cliché too, especially if it helps get your point across: “I’m gonna like me / when I’m called on to stand. / I know all my letters / like the back of my hand” (Curtis, 12).

When you describe your characters, always choose the most ordinary of details: “She was very, very beautiful. . . . She was an excellent student and very good at sports” (Madonna, 12). Ordinary details like these give the illustrator more room to create. Also include details that have no bearing on the story whatsoever (“Most of all, they love to dance” (Madonna, 8)). Just for extra flavor.

Make sure to include among your characters a parent or other adult figure, a fairy godmother perhaps, who can tell your main character what to do. This makes the lesson you’re trying to teach sink in that much better. A parent character could offer advice at bedtime to the main character. Then the main character tries acting on the advice. Of course, it works the very first time. Or a mom tells the main characters that she thinks what they’re doing is wrong: “I think you girls are being unfair. She looks like she could really use a friend” (Madonna, 20). After that a fairy godmother could step in and give your characters the final push they need to do the right thing. It just isn’t realistic to expect kids to solve their problems on their own.

Also keep in mind that a picture book father can really only do one thing—bring home the bacon. Even if he’s a single dad, he can’t possibly do the housework and the cooking on top of his full-time job. Nope. Make the kid do the work instead.

Use a narrator that kids can really relate to, preferably an adult in first person. A man who’s about to become a grandfather for the first time might be good. He can speak directly to the child listener and say things like “I’m going to be your grandpa!” (Crystal, 7). All three- and four-year-olds will automatically know the narrator isn’t really their own grandpa speaking to them. (Maybe add a note to make sure that whoever bought the book reads it out loud to a kid. In case they miss that point.)

Don’t worry if some of the events in your story don’t make total sense to our adult minds. Plenty of girls’ soccer teams hold tryouts one day and then a few days later, without holding practices or doling out uniforms or deciding who plays where, announce when the first game is and expect everyone on the list of players to show up. It’s also perfectly reasonable for one girl to see her name on the list of girls who made the team and not look for her best friend’s name too. After that, not realizing her best friend didn’t make the list, the girl shouts gleefully, “can’t wait til we play” (Couric, 13). Really, these are just minor details that kids wouldn’t notice anyway.

In the interests of teaching your lesson, it’s okay to fib a little and tell kids they’ll still like themselves “when I don’t run so fast. / Then they pick teams / and I’m chosen last” (Curtis, 19–20) or “when my answer is wrong, / like thinking my ruler / was ten inches long” (Curtis, 13). Besides, having kids feel bad about themselves in situations like these is far too predictable.

Remember that coincidence is a writer’s best friend, especially when you’ve gotten your character into a tight spot. A girl doesn’t make the soccer team and plunges into the depths of despair because she’s good at nothing. The very next day, after getting excellent advice from her mother to keep looking and find “the right constellation,” the girl learns that the science fair is just a week away. Well, what do you know? “…there IS a project I’ve been wanting to do.” (Couric, 18). Naturally, since the girl found her constellation (on the first try—that’s fate for you), her mobile made of crystallized sugar wins a blue ribbon. Yep, that coincidence makes storytelling a heck of a lot easier.

Another secret from the writer’s toolbox is the dream sequence. Say you’re writing a basically realistic story. Well, by having your character dream, you can introduce some cool magic like flying in the middle of the night to spy on someone. (Your adult reader will appreciate the parallels to Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.) Giving all four main characters exactly the same dream makes it even more powerful. And when the dream is the final catalyst for change in your characters, and they start behaving nicely the way you always knew they could, that is good writing.

What you waiting for? You too can be an author.

Works Cited

Couric, Katie. Ill. Marjorie Priceman. The Blue Ribbon Day. New York: Doubleday, 2004.

Crystal, Billy. Ill. Elizabeth Sayles. I Already Know I Love You. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.

Curtis, Jamie Lee. Ill. Laura Cornell. Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born. New York: Joanna Cotler Books, 1996.

Curtis, Jamie Lee. Ill. Laura Cornell. I’m Gonna Like Me: Letting off a Little Self-Esteem. New York: Joanna Cotler Books, 2002.

Madonna. Ill. Jeffrey Fulrimari. The English Roses. New York: Callaway, 2003.

Semester two at Vermont College

I see I've been slacking off lately. I haven't discussed my second semester at Vermont College. Time to rectify that oversight, since there's only one month left in my semester.

I'll be turning in homework packet number four (of five) on Nov. 8. This was probably the most ambitious work that Uma Krishnaswami, my adviser this semester, has asked of me.

First, she asked me to cut a scene I really liked (and Michael Stearns liked it too, by the way) and reduce any heavyhanded display of emotion from chapter one. The comment about emotion is pretty funny because showing enough emotion has been something I've struggled with. Guess I went overboard the other way.

Second, she asked me to consider cutting out the chapters told from the viewpoint of a different character and tell the story from a single point of view. When I told my critique group I was going to do this, Kate gasped. She really likes Jake. But when go I back and forth between POV characters, it really chops up the story and messes up the flow. Besides, I'm trying to write a hard-boiled mystery and traditionally those are told from a single, first-person narrator. Jake isn't gone. He's just seen only through Nic's eyes.

Third, I'm supposed to rewrite the first five chapters, making sure something happens in each and that the tension keeps ratcheting up.

Fourth, for new work this time, I'm supposed to write the scene where Nic finds out who the murderer is. I know who the murderer is, but I don't exactly know how she finds that out. Still. Guess I'll just hit the keyboard and see what comes out. It's always interesting to see what the ol' subconcious has been working out.

I told Uma I wasn't scared. I could do this. I'm a tough Midwesterner. This was after my initial reaction of "are you s******* me?"