Metafiction

Metafiction is all the rage. It is defined by Merriam-Webster as fiction on the topic of fictional writing and its conventions In other words, it is often a story about being a story. They are fun to read, I know the adult readers enjoy them as much as children do. Some great ones that come to mind are those by:

Deborah Freeman - Blue Chicken

Mac Barnett- Chloe and the Lion

Herve Tullet- Help! We Need a Title

Richard Byrne- This Book Ate My Dog

There are many more, and they are worth exploring for an often humorous look at picture books-- which is even more entertaining to those of us trying to create them!

The View from the Circ Desk

Things have been a bit quiet in the children's library, with multiple snow days and all. Favorites of late have been princesses, trains and a every possible book on snowmen, snow days, snow monsters, snow kidding!

I'm going to share a personal pet peeve of mine. I don't know who decides on the actual size a picture book will be. I'm sure the author has little to no say in it at all. As someone who selves and re-selves, hunts for books and watches children choose books...the over-sized or tiny sized books are a nuisance. They may look beautiful in a bookstore where there are loads of display shelves. Their covers look lovely for on-line shopping. However, on a crowded shelf with limited height, the over-sized ones are usually rotated so the pages rather than the binding/title show (nothing to attract a young reader to pull it out) The "mini" books often get hidden between taller ones and are overlooked. Just tiny rant from behind the circ desk.

A New Year and New Challenges

Well, I thoroughly enjoyed the PiBoIdMo in November and we are now through all the holidays. There's no more time for excuses, so I have decided to challenge myself by joining The 12x12 Challenge. I hope to take some of the ideas from last November and tweak, embellish and revise so I have a new picture book manuscript each month for 2015. I'm out of my comfort zone with all the technology involved, but so for the instructions have been incredibly user friendly. There is encouragement for the use of social media, another weakness of mine. I'm excited...and if you're not scared, you're not growing, right?