COMMA LONG WITH ME I admit I love punctuation. I love all the little rules surrounding periods, commas, and quotation marks. Maybe it’s because my mom was a professional editor, maybe it’s the added structure punctuation gives to a piece. A lot of times it’s because it makes communication more clear––we’ve all heard the following sentence with and without a comma in the right spot: “Let’s eat, Grandpa!” and “Let’s eat Grandpa!” Whatever it is, punctuation makes me happy. Let's dig into this punctuation primer. Special thanks to Rita Reali for contributing to this episode.  

Comma Long with Me | Writing for Children 213

Do you want to learn how to write for children? The Institute of Children's Literature has taught hundreds of thousands of aspiring writers, and the director of ICL is the host of Writing for Children. Bestselling children's author Katie Davis focuses on the craft of writing for children: how to write a children’s book, how to write for children’s magazines, how to get paid, and get published. There are listener questions, with answers from the experts at the Institute, plus hard-to-find resources and links included in every week's show notes. If you want to learn about how to get into children's publishing, Listen!

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AN INTERVIEW WITH HANNAH HOLT In this rebroadcast, we talk with Hannah Holt, a children’s author with an engineering degree. Her books, The Diamond & The Boy (Balzer+Bray) and A Father’s Love (Philomel) weave together her love of language and science. When not reading or writing, you can find Hannah running marathons and hiking mountains. We talk about  Biggest misconception writers have about getting an agent and/or a book deal Advice for prepublished writers Hannah’s surveys: what she learned, how she used the input. How she created and researched a picture book about her grandfather Questions about “bare bones” publishing, indie, and traditional publishing. 

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FOUR WAYS TO LEARN TO LOVE NONFICTION Many writers view nonfiction as less: less creative than fiction, less fun than fiction, less interesting to kids than fiction, and definitely something they want to do less often. Some will accept the possibility of writing a little nonfiction to break into publishing, but do not like the idea of doing it steadily. For many, they want to do the important work of fiction.   But nonfiction is important. Especially now. Kids love nonfiction, and it's an important teaching tool in support of school curriculum. And nonfiction can offer children something that can help them long after the book is closed: an appreciation of the value of well-researched, accurate facts. That's why we're bringing this rebroadcast to you today.  

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LAUNCHING A STORY FROM A TITLE Chances are you fall into one of two camps when it comes to titles: You either love creating them or you dread trying to think up something clever that will catch a reader’s eye. Thanks to Jan Fields, today we’re going to have some fun creating titles. So much fun your new titles just might launch a new story.  

Launching a Story from a Title | Writing for Children 242

TOP THREE NARRATIVE NONFICTION MISSTEPS Nonfiction is basically broken into two broad types. Expository nonfiction describes, explains, and informs. Narrative nonfiction uses story elements to convey a factual experience. Narrative nonfiction tells a story through carefully researched, factual recounting. Not all nonfiction books are strictly expository or strictly narrative. Some in fact contain both, but for now, Jan Fields has given us a lead on common missteps when writing narrative nonfiction.

Top 3 Narrative Nonfiction Missteps | Writing for Children 241

INTERVIEW WITH A CONTEST JUDGE In this rebroadcast, we interview frequent ICL contest judge and longtime instructor Nancy Coffelt. As well as being a multi-published picture book author and illustrator, Nancy is a fine artist and has been showing in galleries across the country since 1984. Her work is included in personal, public and corporate collections around the world.  Nancy also writes and illustrates books for children. Her books include Catch That Baby, Fred Stays with Me, and The Big Eclipse. 

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