Category: Mentor Texts

The First Page of Your NF Picture Book

10/24/2018

by Nancy I. Sanders

Whether you’re writing about bears or Booker T. Washington, the first page of your nonfiction picture book plays an important role. Note that this is not the first page of your manuscript. This is the text that will become the first page of the published book.

The best way I know to learn how to write a winning first page is to study the first page of current nonfiction picture books. Listen to the voice and see how it establishes the pattern for the rest of the book. Evaluate how the art works together with the text to establish a sense of time and place.

Three Key Categories
I’ve noticed the first page of most nonfiction picture books can be divided up into three categories:

Category 1: The first page introduces the MC or topic.
Category 2: The first page introduces the MC’s or topic’s problem.
Category 3: The first page introduces something significant that helps set up the problem.

The Cover
Have you ever stopped to notice how the cover of a picture book works closely with the first page? The cover of many nonfiction picture books can also be divided into the same three categories. Take for example, the following titles.

This nonfiction picture book falls into the first category and introduces the MC on the cover:
Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave by Laban Carrick Hill

This following nonfiction picture book falls into the second category where the MC’s problem is introduced on the cover:
Dirty Rats? by Darrin Lunde

The following falls into the third category where something significant that helps to set up the problem is introduced on the cover:
The Camping Trip That Changed America by Barb Rosenstock

One of our goals when we work on our own nonfiction picture book is to create a winning first page. And since a picture book’s cover works so closely with the first page, we also want to create a winning title. By studying the first page of current picture books and incorporating their winning strategies into our own, we’ll be well on our way to success.

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Writing Lessons from a Worm

10/10/2018

57 Comments

by Pat Miller

I recently learned to make a vermicompost bin--otherwise known as a worm farm. The idea is to recycle kitchen veggie scraps by feeding them to hungry Red Wrigglers. The worms will happily, over time, turn them into fertile compost for the garden.

As I tore up strips of newspaper for their bedding, it occurred to me that worms are a great model for us writers.

Here are three reasons to imitate a Red Wriggler:

1. Worms aren't easily discouraged.
Though worms have no teeth, they tackle egg shells, carrots, even coffee filters. The repeated rippling of their muscles works the food through their long digestive system to produce castings coveted by gardeners. And this goes on every day.

Writers often create a first draft that is as toothless as a worm's mouth. But through repeated finger movements on the keyboard plus the powerful juices of a brain in gear, they can produce work coveted by readers. And this goes on every day.

2. Worms reside among words.
Strips of newsprint make a good snack for worms and fill their home with words.

Writers fill their homes with the words of others, reading hundreds of books for children, nonfiction and fiction. Those books act like mentors, giving us food for thought. Instead of newsprint, writers need a library card.

3. Worms can turn most anything into the good stuff.
Red Wrigglers turn ordinary things like tea bags and veggie scraps into fertile compost that will one day help plants grow.

Writers use ordinary things as sources of ideas. A writer's "worm brain" would watch the Kentucky Derby, and would wonder, "Why do the women wear such outlandish hats? Why do racehorses have a buddy horse before the race? Why do they run counter-clockwise? Why do they put a horseshoe made of flowers around the neck of the winning horse?" Writers find the answers and convert them to text that will one day help readers grow.

Worms may be lowly and unsung, but they make excellent role models for writers. Here's hoping you become like a Red Wriggler!

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The First Page of Your NF Picture Book

Writing Lessons from a Worm

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