Field Trips – They’re Not Just For Kids If You’re a Children’s Writer!
February 27, 2010 by admin
Filed under Writing for Children
by Suzanne Lieurance
It always amazes me when I meet people who want to write for children, yet they haven’t read a single children’s book since they were children or since their own kids (now ages 35 and 42) were little.
Don’t they get it?
Publishers change, publications change, and even children change with the times! If you want to write for children, you need to start taking “field trips” to keep up with these changes. You’ll not only be better informed about today’s markets, you’ll also become a better writer in the process. Besides…these trips are fun!
Take regular field trips to the children’s section of your local bookstores and the public library. If your interest is in writing picture books, start by looking at as many pictures books as you can each time you visit. If you’d like to write beginning readers, or early chapter books, take time to look at some of these. Also, look for children’s magazines. If you go to your public library, they will often have back issues of magazines, so you can read up to a year’s worth of a particular publication. This is great because you need to know what has been published by each particular magazine in the last 6 months to a year so you won’t be suggesting ideas they have recently covered.
Your public library might not have some of the newest books available at bookstores. But you will be able to check out the books and take them home where you can read them and study them. So make a point to visit both the library and a local bookstore on a regular basis.
Once you start making these little field trips, you’ll look forward to them and realize how valuable they are to your writing.
Going on field trips is one of the best parts. I usually type in best books of 2009/any year on the internet and take tally of them then I check them out at the local library. Its good to see what publishers are looking for and its a good comparison of how things change over the years.
Plus to be a children’s writer, you have to read children’s book. It really is that simply. I have heard that you should read at least 100 picture books before you write your first.
Great article.