Eagle Eye

Nothing like the appearance of a bald eagle to bring all work to a screeching halt. Awesome!

Predictable Texts- Part 2

Predictable texts for picture books work in several ways so the reader can anticipate what come next. Different types of predictable stories include:

Songs- like Old MacDonald had a Farm

Cumulative stories- they build on themselves with repetition like The House that Jack Built

Sequences- they include familiar sequences such as counting or the days of the week as in Chicken Soup with Rice by Maurice Sendak

Pattern- a scene is repeated with a minor change as in The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss

Q&A Stories- A question is repeated as in Whose Footprints? by Molly Croxe

Repetition of a Phrase- a phrase is repeated almost like a refrain as in Goodnight, Gorilla by Peggy Rathman

Rhyme or Rhythm Repetitions-  as in Tough Boris by Mem Fox

Circular or Chain Stories- the story "comes full circle" and ends back at the beginning as in If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff

These story structures are fun to explore. Young children, parents and teachers all delight in them too!

Predictable Texts

A "predictable" picture book may sound ho-hum, but it is often just what the child, parent, reading specialist is looking for. Predictable texts are great fore shared reading. The child learns the pattern, repetition, rhythm or rhyme scheme and can "predict" what comes next. It also allows for pretend reading time, an early literacy skill, when the adult isn't helping and soon the child know the story. Think about children that want to hear the same story over and over again. It is becoming predictable. The child is learning.

Predictable books come in many forms and there are great resources for finding them. In my search to find some mentor texts for my picture book writing, I found these sites very helpful:

Monroe County Public Library Children's Booklists

University of Wisconsin- Polk Library

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?

Another November is Here Already- PIBOIDMO is just around the corner

Go to Tara Lazar's website for information about registration. I love this year's logo created by Vin Vogel.