Love, Laughter, and Life

As I was preparing this post, my daughter said, “Mommy, you always read LOUD!”

She’s right. So if you’d like a LOUDMOUTH to read to your class on World Read Aloud Day this March 4th, look no further.

I’m offering free, 20-minute Skype sessions throughout the day. I’ll read my picture book THE MONSTORE, answer questions from your students, and give everyone a sneak peek of my upcoming books, I THOUGHT THIS WAS A BEAR BOOK and LITTLE RED GLIDING HOOD. I’ll also wear the jammies of your class’s choosing. (I’ve got five awesome pairs from which to choose.)

Kindergarten classes from Mahomet, IL tried to predict what jammies I’d wear.

If you’re interested, email me at tarawrites at yahoo dot com. Suggest a time (be sure to include your time zone so I can calculate if I’m living in the future or the past) and I’ll book you! If…

I’ll admit it, I’m a chocoholic. Totally, extremely, unashamedly so. I would never go to a meeting of Chocoholics Anonymous and confess my addiction, if there were such meetings. I bet they’d serve cocoa and brownies. You name it, if it’s chocolate, I’ll eat it – candy, cake, cookies, muffins, cupcakes, the list is long and delicious.

http://kclr96fm.com/kclr-nights

I was stimulated to write this post by the Story Reading Ape, who had a post on chocolate the other day, and David Prosser, who complained the chocolate added to his waistline. I won’t deny it, chocolate can do that. But it has benefits as well – see Women’s Health http://www.womenshealthmag.com/printwhlist?nid=31240ll – for the full story and the studies.

Cardiovascular benefits: One or two servings of dark chocolate each week can cut your risk for heart failure by as much as a third and lower your blood pressure and risk of heart…

As much as I love language and believe in the magic of the written word, I must admit that we humans are innately visual creatures living in a visually driven era. From print magazines to television, film, and now social media, our world is consumed via highly visual mediums that use images to attract attention, convey information, and tell stories.

We writers can’t be blamed for being somewhat affronted by this state of affairs. For those of us who love to read and write, society’s general disdain for the written word can feel like a personal insult.  In my work as a copywriter and content marketer, I am often forced to concede that the best solutions require less text and more visuals. Brevity and the ability to marry words and images have become indispensible skills in today’s communication arts.

As a writer, you may resist embracing the visual. You…

by Darcy Pattison

You’ve written a picture book manuscript and now you want to know if it’s ready to send out. Here are seven crucial questions to answer.

Overall:
The first three questions focus on the overall story.

1. Topic: Is the story kid appropriate, kid appealing?

2. Language: Is the story age appropriate? Have you used interesting, fun language? Have you allowed places for kids to join in, such as a refrain to repeat?

3. Illustrations: Have you left space for the illustrator? Don’t describe every visual, but leave that to the illustrator. However, DO add things you touch, smell, taste and hear.

From BEAR SNORES ON by Karma Wilson & Jane Chapman

The next four questions focus on the structure and how well the story will lay out in a 32-page format. 

Instructions for these questions:  Divide your manuscript into a minimum of fourteen sections, with each…

As I write this there is a receipt for $1802.00 for 9 brand new windows sitting next to me. Here is how we got to this point.

With minimal luck scrounging through local bone yard piles a glimmer of hope came when a friend of ours connected us with a family friend of hers that worked at a window distributor a few hours away. He sent us a list of their current boneyard windows that were just sitting waiting for someone like us to come along and he recommended the left over Anderson 100 series as a good product. I noticed that 3-5 windows on the list looked like they could work for our project but we decided to hold off until we were a little further along on the project before committing to windows.

Fast forward to late January when we are ready to seriously consider windows and those black…

Today is Multicultural Children’s Book Day! Children’s reading and play advocates Valarie Budayr from Jump Into a Book and Mia Wenjen from Pragmatic Mom have teamed up to create an ambitious (and much needed) national event.

Despite census data that shows 37% of the US population consists of people of color, only 10% of children’s books published have diversity content. Using the Multicultural Children’s Book Day, Mia and Valarie are on a mission to change all of that. Their mission is to not only raise awareness for the kid’s books that celebrate diversity, but to get more of these types of books into classrooms and libraries. Another goal of this exciting event is create a compilation of books and favorite reads that will provide not only a new reading list for the winter, but also a way to expose brilliant books to families, teachers, and libraries.

I try to…