MIRA Will Be B&N National Story Time

I wish I could visit Barnes & Nobles across the country, but Mira actually can! I’m excited to reveal that MIRA FORECASTS THE FUTURE will be a Barnes & Noble National Story Time on August 20. Mira Forecasts the Future National Story Time

Every Saturday at 11 am, Barnes & Noble hosts a story time for kids with the picture book or book of the week. MIRA FORECASTS THE FUTURE (illustrated by Lissy Marlin) and THE BOT THAT SCOTT BUILT (by Kim Norman, illustrated by Agnese Beruzzi) will be read to kids at B&N stores nationwide on August 20.

Find an event near you at Barnes & Noble, or select your store and the date to find a story time with Mira and Scott.

 

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Q&A: Author Spotlight on Kidlit 411

Don't Write Boring StoriesI was featured as the Author Spotlight on Kidlit411 on July 1. Here’s the Q&A. You can read the full post at Kidlit411.

Tell us about your background and how you came to write for children.
I was one of those kids who always wanted to be a writer, and I started out as a writing seminars major when I was in college at Johns Hopkins. The emphasis there was adult literary fiction, and it didn’t draw me as much as my history and sociology classes did. I switched to a humanities major, but I always thought that I would go back to writing adult literary fiction someday when I was adult enough.
It turned out that when I was truly adult, the books that entranced me were written for kids — the Harry Potter series, which inspired a lot of writers. I wrote a middle grade novel when I had an infant daughter and full-time job, and the second novel I wrote was published by Spencer Hill Press in 2014. Writing for children fired me up in a way that writing for grownups never did.
You write a range of categories from adult nonfiction to picture books.  How do you decide what age group to write for, for any particular project? Do you have a favorite age group?
My day job is still writing for adults (and young adults) — I’m a writer and editor at a collegiate business school. It can be fun and creative, but it’s a different kind of creative than writing stories for children. Sometimes I need the kind of magic that’s only found in the pages of children’s books.
I usually have at least two projects in the works — a novel at various stages, and a picture book. Switching between them makes my work stronger. Writing picture books keeps me honest — you have to pare down the story to essentials. Writing for age 4 to 8 has to be my favorite — it’s so satisfying to compress conflicts, reversals, and character growth into a few hundred words.
Congrats on the release of MIRA FORECASTS THE FUTURE. Tell us about the story and what inspired you.
When I was a kid my friends and I made paper fortune tellers for fun, and so do my children. Who doesn’t want to be able to predict the future? But clairvoyance — if it is real — is not something you can learn. Science is.
I was looking for a fun way to encourage learning in the sciences, and I came up with predicting the weather as something children can learn about and try with very little equipment. I love the Jersey Shore and the boardwalk, and I had to set the story there, where the weather changes minute by minute.
What projects are you working on now?
I have a few picture book manuscripts in the hopper, as well as a young adult fantasy. The fantasy is just the kind of book I love to read — no one wrote this one, so my only chance to read it was to write first.
What advice would you give to your younger self? Is it the same advice you would give to aspiring authors?
Don’t write boring stories. Write the stories you love to read. And while you’re at it, read the stories you love to read, and don’t worry about what others will think of it. I’d tell that to any aspiring author, including myself.
What is one thing most people don’t know about you?
When I was 8 years old, I made the decision not to have my ears pierced, and I never have. That didn’t stop me from piercing my sister’s ear with a thumbtack when we were teens. She asked, and I thought a thumbtack would give the best leverage. I do not recommend trying this at home.

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Bruce Springsteen, Superstorms, and Fortune Telling on the Boardwalk

Fourth of July pinwheel at beach

I’m a Belmartian by marriage, which means I claim the beach town of Belmar, NJ, as a home. During Superstorm Sandy, Belmar’s boardwalk was destroyed, and many homes were damaged or demolished.

My beach town was on my mind when I was looking for a picture book idea, and it combined with a line from a Bruce Springsteen song, “Asbury Park, Fourth of July (Sandy).” “Did you hear the cops finally busted Madam Marie for tellin’ fortunes better than they do.”

Sandy, storms, boardwalks, fortune tellers — they all came together in Mira Forecasts the Future, the story of the daughter of a boardwalk fortune teller who can’t see the future with magic, so she learns to predict the weather with science.

Mira learns about weather, and this book is the story of a girl who saves a surfing contest and the day. It doesn’t take place in the present or in the past, despite Lissy Marlin’s gorgeous Boardwalk Empire inspired ilIustrations, but somewhere in between.

It doesn’t take place in New Jersey — it could be Coney Island, Santa Cruz, or any beach town. Boardwalks and beach towns seem like tourist traps to those visiting, but there are real people who live there. I wanted to capture a warm small-town environment — flavored with salt water taffy and pizza by the slice, soundtracked by calliope music and the crash of waves.

Read the original post at Good Reads with Ronna >>

Five Things Writing Novels Taught Me About Writing Picture Books

I write for children of all ages. Two years ago, when my first middle-grade novel, Deadwood, was released, I wrote a post called what What Writing Picture Books Taught Me About Middle-Grade Novels.

This month, my first picture book, Mira Forecasts the Future (illustrated by Lissy Marlin), hit the shelves. So now I take a look in opposite direction to assess what writing novels taught me about writing picture books.

5 things novels taught me about writing picture books

1. Nobody’s perfect.

When beginning to write picture books for young children, many writers have a tendency to want to model good behaviors. But good behaviors don’t make good stories.

Writing and reading novels prove that flawed characters are interesting characters. They make mistakes. They grow. They don’t have to be good influences.

Sometimes picture book readers — agents, teachers, parents, even kids — will call out characters for the wrong things they do, feel, or are. But the interesting, imperfect characters get your attention, and it’s the interesting, imperfect characters who have room to grow. That leads me to my next point.

2. Everybody arcs.

In my favorite books, every character wants something. Every character has their own story and growth. Even villains are the heroes of their own stories.

In a novel, there’s plenty of room to infuse each character with their own motivations, narrative, and character arc. This deepens the emotional impact of the plot and characterization, even if minor characters do much of their growing behind the scenes.

There’s not as much room in a picture book, but there also aren’t many characters. If you can make every character vibrate with their own motivations and change in the course of the story, your picture book will pack more resonance into 300 to 800 words.

3. Know your backstory (but don’t tell it all).

One of the biggest temptations when writing a novel — especially a big, juicy fantasy or historical — is to put all the worldbuilding and research on the page — addendums, family trees, glossaries, maps, footnotes with the history of the centuries. Sometimes this works. Sometimes it’s just an info dump.

When writing novels, you make a critical decision about what backstory not to include. Just because you know something doesn’t mean your reader needs to — the hidden history of your world makes the story more real even if you never put it in the foreground. That’s why it’s called backstory — you can’t show perspective and dimension unless there’s something in the background.

Of course, the few hundred words of text in a picture book don’t allow foreground backstory. The lesson from novels is to know the backstory even if you don’t tell it. If you understand your characters outside of those 300 to 800 words, if they live for you as people (or bunnies or sentient shovels), you’ll have a richer story.

4. Trust your reader.

One reason novel writers leave out backstory is that they trust their readers to pick up allusions and make connections. But can you do that when writing for very young children?

Yes. Your child readers may have only few years behind them, but they’ve accomplished hugely impressive cognitive growth before listening to or reading your story. They understand more than you think they do, and they are capable of understanding so much more than that if you give them a chance. So give them a chance.

5. Be in it for the long haul.

Writing a novel takes stamina. Even a short middle grade novel is 30,000 words. Adult novels are 80,000 and more, and don’t even think about the number of words in a multibook series. You have to write a lot of words, many days in a row or over the course of months or years until you reach the end. Then you revise, again and again. It’s a long haul.

A picture book is shorter than 1000 words, the amount many writers strive to draft in a single day. A picture book manuscript often doesn’t take long to write compared to a novel. But it’s still a long haul.

The individual manuscripts may be short, but shorter isn’t easier. Every word counts. You’ll probably rewrite each one. You may start from a blank page sometimes. You’ll workshop. Revise again.

And still, that first book you write probably won’t be published. Probably not the second. Maybe even your 10th manucript still won’t interest an agent. Maybe it will take your 15th or 20th to get published. And then maybe you’ll write 10 more before you get published again.

Picture books may be short, but they’re not a short cut. Every road in the writing business is a long one. Shorter isn’t easier. Younger isn’t lesser.

Writing is hard for every age. When it works, the writer finds the story, and the story finds the reader. And novel or picture book, that’s what makes it worthwhile.

Read the original post on Project Mayhem >>

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Telling Fortunes, Creating Futures

The best way to predict the future is to create it. Illus by Lissy Marlin. kellandrews.com

When I was a kid I loved making paper fortune tellers. I wrote the fortunes. I folded and colored the paper myself. I tried to use a paper device I made myself to predict the future.

My children do the same thing now. They know, as I did, that the fortunes you write yourself aren’t real clairvoyance. But the fortunes you write do give hints about what is possible — what you wish and fear.

That’s one of the reasons I wrote Mira Forecasts the Future. To make a dream come true, you have to think about it and work toward it. You have to make it happen.

But first you have to dream it. You have to believe it — and you have to know it’s possible for you.

Read the rest of the post at Reviews Coming at YA >>

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Upcoming Events

I’ll be celebrating the launch of MIRA FORECASTS THE FUTURE at several upcoming events.

First I’ll be talking about books with Nahjee Grant on an upcoming episode of his show On the Rise. Nahjee is an author, speaker, and philanthropist. The episode will air on Radnor TV and post on YouTube.

Next, please join me at a bookstore or library event!

Tuesday, June 14, 4 PM
Children’s Book World
Haverford, PA

Philadelphia friends and readers, celebrate release day for MIRA with me.

Saturday, July 2, 11:30 AM
Booktowne
Manasquan, NJ

Come to story time and launch for Jersey Shore friends and readers.

Thursday, July 14, 6:30 PM
Penn Wynne Library
Wynnewood, PA

Pajama story time at my home library — now newly renovated!

 

Not Only a Children’s Writer

How my daughter’s Mo Willems biography report made me realize I don’t value my own work enough

My second grader was assigned a Great Americans biography project. To help her decide on a subject, we checked out biographies of Elizabeth Blackwell, Mae Jemison, Mary Cassatt, Victoria Woodhull, Sonia Sotomayor, and Maria Tallchief — great American women who made achievements in medicine, science, politics, and the arts.

Despite reading those fascinating stories, the Great American my daughter chose to write about was Mo Willems.

My first thought was that he is “only a children’s writer.” I wanted to tell her to choose someone more important. And that says a lot more about me that about him.

Willems has won six Emmys for his work with Sesame Street. He has three Caldecott honors. He won two Geisel Medals and Geisel honors five times. He has written and illustrated more New York Times bestsellers than I have manuscripts in my trunk.

He is far more accomplished in his career than I even hope to be in mine, so what does that say about how I value my own career as a children’s writer, with one novel published and one picture book to come? It shows that I don’t value my own career enough — I have internalized that I am “only a children’s writer.”

Read the rest of the post at Project Middle Grade Mayhem >>

New Website Look

MIRA FORECASTS THE FUTURE (Sterling, June 2016) has gorgeous vintage-inspired beach illustrations from Lissy Marlin, so I thought my website should complement that look. I freshened it up with new header graphics adapting vintage images. Let me know what you think.

cropped-cropped-header-kell-frog.jpg

cropped-header-kell-boardwalk-1.jpgKell Andrews, writer for childrenThe inspiration for the lettering comes from a poster featuring Duke Kahanamoku, the Hawaiian surfing legend and Olympic gold medalist who makes an unnamed cameo in the surf tournament in MIRA.