4RV Authors, Artists, and Editors Awarded

 Among other things, I write books for children. I have five published books with three more in the works at my publisher, 4RV Publishing. The name has nothing to do with recreational vehicles. When the publisher/president started the company, she used the initials of the members of her family: four R’s and a V. You can see all the books (including mine!) and authors at 4RVPublishing.com.

 

 Every year, www.critters.org publishes the Critters Readers Poll on the best in writing for the previous year. Formerly known as “Predators and Editors,” this poll has been published for 25 years. Readers vote on their favorites in forty-five categories including twenty-five genres of novels and short stories, artists, covers, online bookstores, and other areas related to publishing. The most recent winners and runners-up can be found at http://critters.org/predpoll/final_tally.ht.

 This year, 4RV books and editors won several awards, including two First Place awards, six Second Place awards, and one Sixth Place award.

These awards demonstrate the excellence of this small press publisher and care with which the publisher’s president, Vivian Zabel (the “V” in 4RV) selects the editors and the books they publish.

 Congratulations to Cheryl Malandrinos, Jeanne Conway, Vivian Zabel, D. K. Davenport,  Shawn Simon, Rita Durrett and 4RV Publishing!

Classroom Creativity Activities

As a writer of books for children, I try to find ways to bring out their creativity. When I do school readings, I use word-play games to help stimulate the kids’ imagination. For example, my book If You Swallow that Seed (see all my books at http://www.4rvpublishingcatalog.com/wayne-harris-wyrick.php) is about a child whose mother says all those “momisms” we’ve all heard (and perhaps said to our kids) like “If you swallow that seed, a watermelon will grow out of your ear” or “ It’s as easy as falling off of a cliff.” In my book, all of those mom sayings come true, and the child needs to figure out how to break the spells.

After I read the book and as the students and I are discussing it, I ask them what is the oddest thing a parent ever said to them. I also ask what is something odd a parent might say to their child and under what circumstances the parent might say it. That also touches on the Language Arts aspect that teachers in those grade levels are always looking for.

Another creativity spark I use with my own children but have not yet fully refined it for a classroom setting is Create-a-Story. I first thought of this while driving in the car with my bored son Ethan. He knew I wrote children's books; one is even dedicated to him. This is how the activity works. One of us starts telling a story. We have no restrictions on the plot. After the first person makes up what is essentially a few paragraphs, he/she passes the narrative on to the other storyteller. That person must continue the story without contradicting anything that has happened in the story up to that point. This continues back and forth until the story reaches a conclusion, or we arrive at our destination. Because each storyteller can add only so much but wants to impact the story, the action tends to occur at a fast and furious pace.

We have come up with some quite interesting stories. Ethan, now a young adult, often centered his stories around racing cars, a favorite theme of his then and a favorite pastime of his now. My daughter Azuranna, now 12, usually centers hers around fairies and nature nymphs, and, typically, they end up with us (the stories always include one or both of us, or her and her best friend at the time, and often our dog Buki, as characters) falling into a secret hole in the earth or passing through some kind of dimensional portal in a tree or some such enchanted opening, only to end up in the magical fairy universe.

The stories my children and I create never contain raw violence or gore. I didn’t have to make that rule; my kids simply were not raised with such themes being something to glorify. Anytime I see the story going in a direction I think is inappropriate, I use my turn to steer it differently.

But the stories do become somewhat repetitive. A few days ago, Azuranna and I were telling a story and I specifically wanted her to have to create a different narrative. When she set it up for us to interact with fairies, I flipped it around to aliens coming to Earth, taking us into their space ship, different but not so different to make her lose interest. She admitted to being surprised as soon as I constructed that scenario but was thoroughly intrigued to see where this new idea would take us. In fact, we never got to the end of that story, and for the next several days, she beseeched me to finish the story.

While a child may always aim for a familiar plot, the creativity is sparked when the story takes a twist, just as in real story writing. Even when we are in her familiar, comfortable fairy world, I constantly throw in twists she did not anticipate. That keeps the entire story-creation enterprise fresh so that she always loves doing it.

This is how I plan to adapt this to a classroom setting. First, as I describe the activity to the kids, I will explicitly state that certain topics (violence, crime, gore, etc) are off limits. Not that kids stories can’t include any of that; the Goosebumps series comes to mind. But, not all kids are comfortable with such topics. Second, I will set a specified creation time for each child, probably some number of sentences. I am loathed to set a time limit, like 2 minutes per child, as I want to be able to encourage the reluctant kids who might otherwise sit and think through a time allotment without saying anything. With a sentence allotment, I can encourage that child without a ticking clock.

I plan on asking the teacher in advance which kids are outgoing and eager to talk and which are shy and rarely speak. Those shy students are the ones I most want to reach but must tread more carefully with. I would start by calling on a few of the talkative kids to get the ball rolling then sprinkle in the shier students. By planning the time carefully, I would attempt to get every child involved, although I recognize that some children are just so shy, they may never be willing to participate.

If the teacher has a large dry-erase board or large writing pad, I may have kids come up and write a few sentences. Some kids who may not be willing to speak might be willing to write a few sentences. And if the teacher agrees, before I leave I would write a few sentences on the board/pad to start a new story and let the kids work on the story as classroom time permits. Many teachers today have electronic write-on, or smart, boards that can capture whatever is written on them to a computer, so each kid could get a copy of their combined story.

Another rule of this activity is that I or the teacher can jump in at any time to add something to the story. This allows me to steer it away from repetition or a known popular kid’s story (Azuranna did that in the beginning before I explained that we wanted to create an original story). It also allows us to keep the story from going to topics that might be inappropriate in that classroom setting.

This is one of several ideas I am working on to interact with school kids using education standards of language arts. Others may become topics of future blogs.

I would love to hear your ideas on the subject. Please leave comments below or email me at wyrickwrites@gmail.com.

Special thanks to Kristin Perkins and Jay Thomas, elementary teacher friends of mine, for invaluable comments on this piece.

Writing the Perfect Picture book

When people find out I write children’s books, particularly picture books, they often tell me that they have a great idea for a picture book but have questions about the process. Can I answer a few questions, they ask.

Before they can ask me, I ask them a couple of questions. Have you read any picture book lately?

Oh, sure, they say, I read my kids all the Dr. Seuss books when they were little. And I took my grandkids to see the movie 'Where the Wild Things Are.'

But, I ask, have you read any picture books published recently? They often have not.

Then I ask if they have actually written the book. Again, I often hear “No, it’s an idea I have.”

The Writing.

People think writing a picture book is easy. It’s only 500 – 1000 words. No problem. But the very brevity of picture books is what makes them so difficult to do well.

Let’s say you write an 80,000-word adult novel. If 5% of the writing is weak, which doesn’t seem so horrible (a 95% success, that’s a grade of A), that means you have 4,000 poorly-chosen words (or badly constructed sentences) an average of one or two per page of 200 words.

If 5% of your writing on an 800-word picture book is weak, you’ll have 40 bad words, more than one on a page with only 30 words or less on it. While it’s the same percentage, they will stand out more far more obviously.

I tell them to go to the library or a book store and read dozens of picture books. See what works; learn why they were good enough to get published.

Most publishers want their picture books to cover 24 pages. While they generally do not want you to indicate the page breaks, you have to think in terms of 24 pages (or 28 or 32, whatever the publisher’s guidelines state). Publishers will state on their web pages word count and preferred page length, so make darn sure you adhere to those guidelines.

Check Age-Appropriateness.

Let an elementary teacher read your picture book. Take her criticism seriously. Read it to a child of the appropriate age. Take his comments seriously, but remember that a young child won’t use the words an adult would. You need to learn to understand child-speak and note their facial expressions and body language as you read it. Having trouble doing that? Then why are you writing books for young children?

Write and rewrite it. My first picture book, only 800 words, took me five years to get what I felt were the exact right words for it.

Make sure it is appropriate for the age you intend it for. While it may sound perfectly clear and understandable to you, you are not a six-year-old child. One of my most used reference books, when I write for kids, is “Children’s Writer’s Word Book” by Alijandra Mogilner. It lists common words understandable by grade level. Think of this book as a thesaurus for child-compatible words. It gives alternative words to use for other grade levels. Suppose you use the word novel, as in new or unusual. ‘Novel’ is a 5^th-grade word used in that context, so if you put it in a book meant for 1^st graders, they won’t know what it means. The book suggests ‘new’ for kindergarteners, ‘latest’ for 1^st grade, ‘fresh’ or ‘modern’ for 2^nd graders, and so on. Each of those can be looked up to possibly give you more options.

Will Your Audience Understand It?

When you are done with your first draft, and indeed after every draft, run the story through a readability checker. Several can be found online, like http://datayze.com/readability-analyzer.php.  Or, here, you can find 10 different readability calculators: https://www.wyliecomm.com/2018/11/10-free-readability-calculators/. Try them all on the same piece of writing, see which ones help you the most.

Illustrating It.

Perhaps the most-asked question I get from would-be picture book authors is where do I fond my illustrators. I do not find illustrators. My books are published by a full-service indie press, and they have in-house illustrators. And, in general, you do not want to provide illustrations with your book. That just gives publishers two possible reasons to reject your book. If you or your friend who draws as a hobby have no experience illustrating picture books, you are not likely to provide illustrations the publisher wants.

As you write your books, you do have to think in pictures, even if your pictures are nothing like what the illustrator eventually comes up with. Make sure the story has action in it, action that can be illustrated. If you write a story where the same picture works for several pages, the publisher won’t want it and the illustrator won’t want to illustrate it. Picture books are really two books in one, the words and the pictures. And if you’re a 6-year-old kid, which will be more important to you? Make sure your picture book allows for interesting, varied, and exciting pictures.

learn

Bio.

I currently have 5 published books for children, with three more currently in the illustration stage with my publisher, 4RV Publishing. I spent 40 years as the director of a planetarium where I brought the wonders of the universe to audience members from 4 to 104. I have raised four children, my best audience and greatest critics.