Ok. I am going to admit right here right now that I don’t know anything about being a children’s book author. That’s not true. I know how to write books. I like writing books. Writing is so cozy. It feels just right to be curled up with a pen and a journal and my own head, writing a story or a poem. Just right.
The part I don’t know anything about is the showing-the-world-I-wrote-a-book part. For example, my wonderful brother made this website. He knows I have to show the world I wrote a book. He told me to write posts on the website.
I don’t know what to write.
I teach elementary school. My favorite things to teach are writing and science. When my students don’t know what to write, I tell them to write about how hard it is to come up with an idea to write. Boom. Instant idea.
I do, however, have an idea for this post. I swear.
When one doesn’t know how to do something, one must teach one’s self. I need to go to some author visits. Luckily, since I am a teacher with two kids of my own, and a writer, and a New Yorker, I tend to feel like a busy person. When my school had an author come to visit, I felt like the master of the universe! I can do it all.
On Monday, the lovely Anica Mrose Ricci, author of the Anna, Banana series and The Teacher’s Pet came to my school for a visit. Here are some things I learned:
- Cross your fingers that your mom saved everything you ever wrote as a child, because — oh, boy. It is super cute to put your second-grade writing up on the smartboard in front of second graders when you are a published author.
- Cross your fingers that your mom or dad took lots of pictures of you reading and writing when you were a little kid. Extra super cuteness.
- Make a connection between things that you like and things that you write.
- Talk about the publishing process. Let them know that you don’t draw the pictures (if you didn’t, which I don’t) and you don’t know how to bind a book. But that you did have cute little back-and-forths with the illustrator.
- Ask the illustrator to share some of their process illustrations with you.
- Wear something cute and quirky.
That’s what I have learned so far. Thanks, Anica, for the lesson. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go call my mom about some photos.