Ballet dancers make floating in the air look easy. They make balancing en pointe look effortless. How do they do that? Only because of the hours of training and torture they have put their bodies through. Only through sacrifice and suffering. Behind all that ease, lies hard work. Maybe tears. Certainly pain. Mastery is making… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Picture Books
Picture books and Pantomime
Pantomime is a participatory form of theater. (Apologies if you are British and I might just as well be explaining to you what tea is.) Pantomime requires your participation for it to work. The audience is expected to sing along with certain parts of the music and shout out phrases to the performers. (Help! Are… Read more »
Picture Books and Accounting
One December, I found myself looking back over the year wondering, unhelpfully, in a businessy tax-ish counting sort of way: “Now let’s see, what exactly did I do this year?” (I should have known by that “exactly” where this would go). So I began counting up the number of picture book manuscripts I’d done that… Read more »
Doreen’s First Outing
I had my precious one and only author copy, which I mistakenly showed to my little three-year old friend AE… She immediately had to have it read to her 15 times. And then took it to bed. And has gone to sleep with it ever since. She calls it her fishy book. And says it’s… Read more »
Follow the Fish!
We writers are always being asked where we get our ideas. I got this one when I wasn’t looking—when I was trying to write something else altogether. And became my latest picture book, POOR DOREEN: A FISHY TALE. The story I’d wanted to write was going to be elegant and atmospheric and quiet about a… Read more »
Picture Books and Margaret Wise Brown
“A book should try to accomplish something more than just to repeat a child’s own experiences. One would hope rather to make a child laugh or feel clear and happy-headed as he follows a simple rhythm to its logical end, to jolt him with the unexpected and comfort him with the familiar; and perhaps to… Read more »
“Song of the Stars”
“And high above a single star set in the highest heavens shone out brighter than all the others and poured down silver onto the little shed… ‘A Light to light up the whole world.’” Song of the Stars When Zondervan asked me to write a Christmas picture book, my first thought was (I’ll be honest)… Read more »
Advent: How Long, Lord?
“How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, … but you do not save?” Habakkuk 1:2, “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil…” Habakkuk 1:13 Fighting, suffering, sickness, tears—all the things God hates most—are everywhere in our world. They’re in our own hearts,… Read more »
Teach children that the Bible is not about them
When I’m invited to go and speak to children in church settings, I ask them two questions: 1/How many people here sometimes think you have to be good for God to love you? (They tentatively raise their hands. I raise my hand along with them.) 2/How many people here sometimes think that if you aren’t… Read more »