I have been a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) since my first children’s book was published in 1997. File folders full of rejection letters aside, I have been lucky to have found publishing homes for three additional books during the intervening years. You can read about those on the Children’s Books and Sites Page on my Storytrail website.
This coming Saturday, March 27, I will be joining author Dawn Young, author-illustrator Nate Evans, and illustrator Jim Paillot to participate in a virtual SCBWI-AZ Author Showcase and Q&A.
Thank you to Laura Ellen and Dianne White, SCBWI-Arizona PAL coordinators. The Spotlight Zoom will involve us in introducing ourselves and our books and provide members of the children’s books writing community the opportunity to get answers to their general publishing questions.
Please Don’t Give Me a Hug! and a Spanish edition ¡Por favor, ¡no me abraces! were first published as a donation on the Make Way for Books (MWFB) app. MWFB Arizona is an early literacy nonprofit that provides proven programs, services, and resources to 30,000 young children, parents, and educators throughout southern Arizona each year. Their mission is to give all children the chance to read and succeed.
Check it out: If you are writing for infants, toddlers, preschool children and their families, you should know that MWFB currently has a call for submissions, open until March 31st.
Thanks to Star Bright Books, my Please Don’t Give Me a Hug! story will be published as a board book, available for distribution at the end of April. MWFB gave me back the rights to the story. In exchange, I am donating a portion of the proceeds from the e-book to MWFB. Win-win-win.
Meeting Star Bright Books publisher Deborah Shine was an amazing coincidence and gift of encouragement for my passion for writing for children. Way back in 2002, I ran into my neighbor and children’s book author and illustrator Ron Himler in the produce section of our grocery store. Ron told me the story behind his newly released picture book Six Is So Much Less than Seven.
I asked him to send me a copy and promised I would review it. Ron loved my review and shared it with his publisher, Deborah Shine, who invited me to review books for Star Bright. After I shared a copy of my first published book with Deborah, she asked if I had others. I recited Read to Me, a poem I has written for then Tucson Public Library’s Project L.I.F.T., Literacy Involves Families Together. The poem, written for the teen parents who participated in that project, fit perfectly with Star Bright’s mission.
The poem became the board book Read to Me, which has since been published in English, Spanish, bilingual Spanish/English, Vietnamese/English, and Haitian Creole/English. The book has sold some 150,000 copies mostly to early childhood and family literacy programs. The first organization to purchase and distribute the book widely was… you guessed it… Make Way for Books.
Note: Star Bright Books publishes books for young children in 25 different languages. All of Star Bright’s bilingual books display the heritage language first on the page followed by English. For the last twenty years, Deborah Shine and Star Bright’s commitment to diversity in language and culture in both text and illustrations is admirable and all too rare among publishers of books for young people.
Working with Deborah Shine and the team at Star Bright Books has been a wonder. I am thrilled to be working with them again to promote Please Don’t Give Me a Hug!
Estelle Corke painted the child-friendly illustrations for the book. As an author who cannot draw, I am especially grateful when the illustrations for the stories I write include diverse characters in terms of race, ethnicity, sex, age, and ability. Thank you, Estelle, and Star Bright!
Although I receive a tremendous sense of accomplishment and satisfaction from publishing professional books for school librarians and classroom teachers, there is a slightly different quality to my feelings about the books for children and families that are published with my name on the cover.
Knowing that a child, parent, older sibling, grandparent, childcare provider, teacher, librarian, and others may at any given moment be reading one of my books to a young person… well, for me, it just doesn’t get much better than that!
I hope you will join us on Saturday, March 27, 2021, and share our love of publishing books for children. The Showcase is free and open to all. If you are able and interested in joining us, go to the online registration form.