I still want to blog a bit about Kidlitosphere, but Sunday evening was another lovely book event. The Inside Story.
Here are some highlights from each presenter's 3 minutes:
Royce Buckingham
Royce's inspiration for Demonkeeper comes from his years as a prosecutor in juvenile court. A teen that Royce regularly saw come into court suddenly stopped showing up. When Royce contacted the boy's parents they, too, didn't know where the teen was and said, "We think he's in Texas." Royce writes in his bio (check out Royce's awesome author photo with sword!):
I imagined the chaos of street life as a monster that rose and ate him up while people weren’t paying attention, as it does with so many lost children. I wrote a screenplay from that story. The script evolved into a much more lighthearted and fun tale than that short tale I wrote years earlier, but the message remained—kids need stability, family and a home.
Tara Larsen Chang and Jo Gershman:
Tara and Jo did an adorable cel phone skit. Tara had been contacted to illustrate the first four books in a new series about fairy horses based on Breyer toy models. After agreeing, the scope of the job changed -- the illustration count for each book quadrupled and the deadline for nearly 200 illustrations was ten weeks. Kismet! Tara's friend and fellow illustrator Jo had recently taken a drawing course on horse anatomy and was available to help co-illustrate the books. They used the same color palate, paper, and even ate the same chocolate to ensure similarity between illustrations. They can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they are already at work on the next four books in the series.
Kathryn Galbraith
Kathryn, the dynamo 1st Muskateer of the 3 Muskateers that teach the UW Extension Writing for Children series has the most adorable Halloween book out. Boo, Bunny! Kathryn started writing it in 1996. She worked on it for two years expanding it from a board book to a 97 word picture book. Sold it to Harcourt where their only manuscript correction was that she add an exclamation point. And then to find the perfect illustrator it took SEVEN years. But it really is the perfect illustrator.
Brenda Z. Guiberson
Brenda is the 3rd superstar Muskateer of the above mentioned Extensioneers. Brenda's book, Ice Bears, is as all her other books are, a book to look to on how to make non-fiction riveting and relevant. Brenda invited audience members to go home and see why melting ice is such a bad thing for polar bears and us: get a sheet of black paper and white paper and leave them outside in the sun (if you have sun anymore where you live.) The white represents the ice a polar bear lives on and the black is the ocean being exposed by the shrinking ice. Feel the two papers -- the white will be much cooler than the black. So simple we should know this, but think of how much more heat is being generated the more ice we lose and the more ocean we expose.
Jennifer Heger
Jennifer is a new face and she had a great Inside Story debut with her book I'm Nocturnal, How About You? She talked about being a field trip chaperone to the Woodland Park Zoo. How kids can be real wild animals there -- running, yelling, eager to zip around to each animal for only brief visits. Until you get to the Nocturnal House. At the Nocturnal House, which is still my favorite, too, kids get quiet, bunch up,listen and wait. They whisper, "There's a bat right in front of us!"
Jennifer's book has black pages with white line drawings and even comes with a CD.
Peg Kehret
Peg is so posh. I love it when she makes the trip West to be with us at SCBWI events and I get to hear her talk. Her latest book Stolen Children took 30 some years to write! Originally the story's main character was a college-age babysitter. Peg was given some advice (an editor, I presume) that she might consider what the story would be like if the protagonist was even younger. Coming back to the manuscript many years later the older babysitter, who goes searching for the kidnapped kids in the original story becomes a teen sitter kidnapped along with the children. Peg picked up her 44th state book award yesterday to boot.
Kirby Larson
My buddy, talked about her relationship with author Mary Nethery and how they are opposites not unlike Bobbi Dog and Bob Cat. Kirby said Mary likes frosting and Kirby likes cake, but I've seen Kirby eat her fair share of these, tops and all. I adore The Two Bobbies and am so excited to see it has been nominated for a Cybil.
Rest of the line up in my next post!
