Here it is:
Thursday, February 23, 2012
FLAP! Book Trailer
Here it is:
Monday, February 20, 2012
Researching the Genre You Want to Write
I have tons of ideas for picture books for children ages one
to six. So many, in fact, that I posted 10 Story Starters on my blog to share
ideas with other kidlit writers and illustrators. The Starters are open ended
so it isn’t like I am giving away lots of specific ideas that I will use.
While I love writing picture books, I have a few ideas
rolling around for books that are a little longer. Jumping from picture books to chapter books
or mid grade novels required me to do a little research. I had read a ton of
books from this genre; I just had not studied them. There is a difference.
Research:
I went to the library and pulled the first books from three
different mid grade series books for girls. I knew my target was a girl between
ages 7-9 so I looked specifically at early mid grade books/older chapter books.
I pulled from Junie B Jones by: Barbara Park, Clementine by: Sara Pennypacker,
and Katie Kazoo by: Nancy Krulik.
I took my book choices to a quiet table with an outlet and
plugged in my laptop. I opened each book and typed in the following information:
Series Name
Book Name
Author
Publisher
Agent (if mentioned in the Dedication or the About the
Author section)
Number of Chapters
Number of Pages in the Whole Book
Average Number of Pages per Chapter
Then I propped up the book next to my computer and typed
(yes, typed*) the entire first chapter, then the second. I did not include page
breaks – I typed it as it would look in manuscript form so I could see it that
way. I used Word Count to get a tally for the number of words in each of
these first two chapters, added them together, and divided in two to get an
average number of words per chapter. I also divided the number of words per chapter by the number of pages to get an average number of words per page. I typed this into my list of info about
that book.
After typing (and thereby reading) the chapters, I added the
point of view and the age of the mc.
Next, I set the View on my screen so that I could see 1 whole
page on the screen. I looked at it for a few minutes, noting the length of the
paragraphs, the amount of dialogue versus description, the tag lines, and the
amount of italics and bold letters. I scrolled page my page
just looking and taking mental notes (not typing in anything).
I gathered this list of information and typed in the first
two chapters of all three books. Then I compared the data from all three. I
highly suggest doing this research. I learn by doing so the act of typing in
the words of another author helped me to feel the lengths of the sentences, the
amount of dialogue, and the amount of description.
*Important Note: Do not use this typed in data and chapters
for anything but research. It is plagiarism to copy someone else’s work and claim
is as your own. This exercise was only to gather information about successful books
in the genre in which I have chosen to write.
With that said, here's just a bit of what I learned from 2 of the books:
Katie Kazoo Switcheroo:
Book: 76 pages
10 chapters
All chapters 6-7 pages long.
Average words per page = 120 (there are b/w line drawings
scattered through this book)
Clementine:
Book: 135 pages
10 chapters
Average length of chapters: 11.5 pages (ranged between 9 -14 pages in each
chapter)
Average words per page = 103 (there were b/w line drawings
scattered through this book)
Summary:
A chapter book or early mid grade novel for this target
audience should be about 70-150 pages long – by this, I mean book pages which
at an average of 120 words per page is roughly half of a double spaced, 12 pt
New York Times with a 1 inch margin page. Translation – a book for this target
age is about a 35-60 page manuscript and each chapter is only about 3-6 typed
pages.
Next Blog Post:
Outlining your Chapter Book or Mid-Grade Novel
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