Nancy I. Sanders's Blog, page 55

Book Review: A Star for Jesus

A Star for Jesus

By Crystal Bowman

Illustrated by Claudine Gevry

What a delightful and precious children’s book for little hands to hold and read! Written in rhyme, this is a fresh retelling of the Christmas story when the star brought the wise men to worship the newborn King, Jesus. It is the perfect introduction to young ears who are hearing the account for the very first time and the perfect way for you to engage young hearts with the mystery and majesty surrounding the birth of the Son of God.

One of the first things that appealed to me about A Star for Jesus is the format. It’s an oversized board book for babies and toddlers that is cut in a unique shape following one of the edges of the star on the cover.

I love Crystal Bowman’s children’s books to begin with, so this new book of hers caught my eye. The soft and beautiful illustrations are the perfect compliment that help brings the text to life. I especially love how the book ends with a gentle reminder to little ones to remember the Christmas star and how God sent His Son to earth each time they see the stars twinkling in the night sky. This will make a wonderful Christmas gift to give this Christmas as well as add to our own collection of Christmas books. Sure to become a favorite with every family!

-Note: I joined BookLook Bloggers, a wonderful resource where you get free Christian books in exchange for an honest review. To read more about this book, click here. To read my disclaimer, more of my reviews, and also learn how you can join and enjoy the benefits of this great program, click on the following:

Disclaimer

Filed under: Book Review

Writing Opportunity: Let’s Dig Into Chapter Books Part 2

Let’s take one last look at THE RED FLYER ROLLER COASTER.

There’s a lot of stats listed here if you click on the tab for “View Description.”

The word count is: 2600 words.

This tells us that our manuscript needs to be about that length if we’re going to write one at this reading level.

The page count is 40 pages for the published book.

The grade is 2. This series of chapter books is for kids in second grade. The topic should appeal to second graders, the universal theme should be geared for second graders, the characters should appeal to second graders, and the vocabulary level should be geared for second graders.

There are 3 other stats that are all about reading levels. You see them listed at the top and again at the bottom:

Reading Recovery Level: 20

Fountas and Pinnell Guided Reading Level: L

DRA2 Level: 24

Does this sound like Greek to you? It does to me. To be honest, I’ve written tons of beginning readers over the years but I’m not familiar with these levels. So I did some research. I’ll share this with you. If you know of other links to share with us to helps us understand all this better, that would be awesome!

Reading Recovery Level:

I found an online pdf file put together of different books at different reading levels. I printed it out to use as a handy reference. You can check out some of the ones at level 20 to compare to this one.

Fountas and Pinnell:

Here’s a site to explore to learn more about these levels. Also, here’s a link to see one of their books on how they level texts.

DRA2 Level: 24

Here’s a chart to help understand what this means, too.

If this is all brand new to you, don’t stress out about it. Just look at the links and digest what you can. The more we look at these things, the more our brain can grasp it. It will eventually gel enough to mean something of value to us as we work on writing our manuscript. For now, just look and know that Kaeden works in this world of leveled reading, so we can become more familiar with it as we go along our journey.

We’ll move forward on the beginning chapter books in the upcoming post.

Filed under: Beginning Readers, Chapter Books

Writing Opportunity: Let’s Dig Into Beginning Chapter Books

Since Kaeden Books says in their submission guidelines that they have a particular need for beginning chapter books, let’s dig into beginning chapter books!

Now, what exactly do they mean? I’m not sure, so the first thing I want to do is explore their online catalog to see what beginning chapter books they’re already publishing.

So I went to their site and hovered my mouse over their tab across the top that says BOOK/MEDIA. A drop-down menu appeared and near the bottom was CHAPTER BOOKS. So I clicked on the link. I found that they publish.

We want to study this list carefully and look for a number of things. I printed out this 2-page list of 14 titles and put it in a file folder marked: Kaeden’s Chapter Book Titles.

I was disappointed that none of these chapter book titles here include a Google preview, so we can’t actually see a picture of what their books look like inside as we did with some of their other books.

But there is a lot of information available, so let’s take a close look at what they DO tell us.

How about we study ADVENTURES OF SOPHIE BEAN: THE RED FLYER ROLLER COASTER. Click on that title and click on the tab for “View Description.”

It tells us the plot. Sophie Bean wants to go on a roller coaster ride but she keeps hearing she’s too small. (Sounds like there’s a lot of repetition in the text, which is what we’ve seen in earlier reading levels, too.) So it sounds like there’s a clear beginning where she goes to the amusement park, a middle where she keeps trying to get measured to see if she’s tall enough, and there will be a surprise at the end.

And the description concludes with a sentence that tells us a lot:

Students will relate to this story. Kaeden wants us to use universal themes in our stories that every kid can relate to. If you’re not sure what a universal theme is or how to brainstorm ideas for this, I go into great depth on this in Section 7.1 Fresh and Original on pages 164-171 in my how-to book for children’s writers, Yes! You Can Learn How to Write Beginning Readers and Chapter Books.

You can also find helpful lists of universal themes on the site of my favorite writing buddies, Writing According to Humphrey and Friends.

(The universal theme for one of these stories needs to appeal to kids in second grade.)

This description also says: “lovable character.” Kaeden wants lovable characters. Characters kids will love. This ties back into their submissions guidelines where they say they’re looking for strong characters with potential to become a series. Sophie Bean is one of these characters. That’s the kind of character you want to be thinking of for your own manuscript submission.

To wrap up this post today:

We’ll need to have a plot that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

We’ll need to pick a universal theme for our story to be built upon.

We’ll need to pick a lovable character who can have multiple books written about him or her.

Filed under: Beginning Readers, Chapter Books, Writing Skills, Writing Tips

Join Me for a Live Radio Chat with Marnie!

Do you want to learn more about writing a compelling first line or lead to your manuscript?

Then join me on my radio interview with Marnie!

This exciting and informative interview will take place tomorrow on Wednesday, October 8.

It will be from 3:00-4:00 Central Time Zone. (Check out your own time zone to see what time that will be!)

You can listen in on Marnie’s Website.

OR

You can call in to this phone number: 646-727-2510.

For more information about the 8 Strategies we’ll be discussing on how YOU can write a compelling lead, go to Marnie’s website today.

Filed under: Interviews, Writing Skills, Writing Tips

Writing Opportunity: Submission Guidelines

Let’s take a final peek at Kaeden Books’ Submission Guidelines.

TEXT

Kaeden Books is an educational publisher who provides books that teach students how to read. If you don’t know what that means or haven’t explored these types of manuscripts much before, there are 2 very helpful books that can get you on the right page.

Mogilner’s Children’s Writer’s Word Book

My own Yes! You Can Learn How to Write Beginning Readers and Chapter Books

Study the pages in both books for grades Kindergarten through Second Grade. Each word in your manuscript and each sentence in your manuscript needs to fit these requirements.

This isn’t hard to do, it just take careful thought.

And don’t stress about this too much if this is brand new to you. We’ll talk about this in an upcoming post.

PLEASE DO NOT SUBMIT

In this section, they tell you want they don’t want. They mean this. Really. So if you have a manuscript you’re just dying to send to them but it falls under what they listed here, be patient. Wait until you land your first contract with them following their guidelines to submit what they need. Then wait until you sign your second and even perhaps your third contract with them. And THEN at that point if you feel your manuscript that you already wrote would be the perfect fit for them, talk with your editor about it. Who knows? You might be right! But now your editor knows you and will be open to listening to you about it.

The rest of the submission guidelines is about submitting illustrations. (Let me know if you have a question about this.) And then the procedure to submit your manuscript. We’ll go over that in an upcoming post when we’re at that point.

Okay. That’s it! Do you have any questions about the submission guidelines?

We’ll move on to our next step for submitting to Kaeden Books in an upcoming post.

Filed under: Beginning Readers, Chapter Books, Inspiration, Writing Skills, Writing Tips

Writing Opportunity: Submission Guidelines

Next on the page of Kaeden Books’ Submission Guidelines are the Author Guidelines themselves!



AUTHOR GUIDELINES

They state that AT THIS TIME, WE HAVE A PARTICULAR NEED FOR…

Do you hear the sirens going off? Waa-OOOOOOO-ooooo, Waa-OOOOOO-oooooo, Waa-OOOOOO-oooooo.

Do you hear the bells ringing? Clang, clang, clang!

Do you hear the drums rolling? Rat-a-tat-tat. Rat-a-tat-tat.

They are all saying one message: TAKE NOTE, AUTHOR!!!!

The editors at Kaeden Books are talking with you, yes YOU and are about to tell you something very very important. Something that publishers don’t very often tell you. Something that is the key to opening the treasure chest. Something that is Aladdin’s magic lamp. Something that is the ticket to get us onto the most exciting ride in the amusement park.

Something that they don’t take very lightly and neither should we.

They PARTICULARLY NEED:

Beginning Chapter Books

Unique Nonfiction Manuscripts

Manuscripts with Strong Characters that have Potential to become Series

And then (thank you, editors at Kaeden Books!) they don’t leave us in the dark about these three specific needs. They spell out EXACTLY what they want these books to be like.

FICTION

If we want to submit fiction to them, our manuscript should have humor, should have a surprise ending, and should have characters that appeal to children in pre-K through second grade.

These fiction stories should have predictable plots, but should have a clear beginning, a clear middle, and a clear ending.

NONFICTION

And for all of us who want to submit nonfiction to them, our manuscript should be INTERESTING.

We should write the sentences using vocabulary words geared to specific grade levels to make the information presented in a language that is comprehensible by children in specific grades in school.

We should include information and supporting facts to go along with the very simple text of the story. (See the Google Preview for the book “Careers” to see how these facts are included like sidebars on the photographs.)

LENGTH

25 words to 3000 words. We’ll discuss this in an upcoming post.

And then they REPEAT: BEGINNING CHAPTER BOOKS ARE WELCOME.

I don’t know about you, but if you have even the remotest inclination to submitting a beginning chapter book to them, GO FOR IT! This is the second time they’ve stated here that this is particularly what they’re looking for. So if you’ve been wondering what to start working on, this would be a fantastic focus for you to take.

We’ll talk in detail about how to prepare a beginning chapter book in an upcoming post.

I’m just so jazzed and excited about this amazing opportunity. It’s not every day in the publishing world that we get such a clear invitation to submit, complete with specific details.

And even if we don’t actually land a contract with them (okay, let’s be realistic here…it’s not easy to land a book contract) we will learn so much valuable information and our writing skills will improve along this journey that we can take a step in the write direction to hopefully landing a book contract with Kaeden Books or another publisher soon.

Filed under: Beginning Readers, Chapter Books, Inspiration

Writing Opportunity: Submission Guidelines

While we’re having fun doing some writing exercises, let’s roll up our sleeves and take a look at Kaeden Book’s Submission Guidelines.

For starters, they state they are an educational publisher. Do you know what this means? It means several things including:

1. They are NOT a trade book publisher. Trade book publishers produce books for the general public to buy. These are the books you find in your local bookstore such as Barnes and Nobles. Kaeden Books isn’t one of these publishers and chances are you won’t find their books at your local bookstore.

2. They publish books for teachers, librarians, and educators to buy. (Not parents or kids to buy.) You might find their books at a teacher’s supply store or in catalogs they send to schools.

3. Most educational publishers offer work-for-hire contracts instead of royalty-based contracts. This means that they purchase the rights to any manuscript they accept. It becomes their property and they can do anything they want with it. You can’t. This also means that they usually pay their authors a one-time flat fee. Of course, sometimes that may be different, but this is just a general thing most educational publishers do. So don’t send them a manuscript that is near and dear to your heart. Plan on working on a brand new manuscript that you can send to them that fits their guidelines and that they can purchase and keep as their own property. (That’s why we’re doing writing exercises along the way.)

Next, their guidelines state that they “specialize in early literacy books and beginning chapter books that support young readers.” Do you know what this means? Among other things, this can mean:

1. They like books that teach children to read.

2. They like books for the younger grade levels such as pre-kindergarten through second grade.

3. They like books that use grade-level vocabulary and specific sentence lengths.

Their guidelines also state that authors need to be familiar with guided reading, Reading Recovery (R), and reading intervention programs. If you’re not yet familiar with these, here are some resources to explore:

Reading Recovery

The Children’s Writer’s Word Book

Phonics from A to Z by Wiley Blevins

And my book, Yes! You Can Learn How to Write Beginning Readers and Chapter Books

Let me know if you have any questions about what we’ve looked at so far!

Filed under: Beginning Readers, Chapter Books, How-to Books for Writers

Writing Opportunity: Writing Exercise

I want to take several posts to explain important information about Kaeden Books’ page of writer’s guidelines, but before we start that, I thought it would be good to do a writing exercise together.

Step 1: Find a mentor text

When you target a specific publisher, you want to use their very own books as mentor texts. (Unsure about what a mentor text is or what to do with it? CLICK HERE for more info.)

For our writing exercise that we’re doing together, let’s choose their book FLOWERS by Karen Hoenecke as our mentor text.

Step 2: Read the mentor text

Click on the GOOGLE PREVIEW that is given for the book flowers. Read as many pages of the book as you can.

Step 3: Type out the mentor text

Now open up a Word document and type out as many pages as you can see in the preview. (For this writing exercise, let’s just focus on the repeating sentence in large type.) It’s always good to type out your mentor text (or portions if it’s a long book). It trains your brain to think and work in this genre among other benefits.

Here it is:

4: Some flowers are yellow.

5: Some flowers are red.

6: Some flowers are orange.

7: Some flowers are purple.

8: Some flowers are blue.

Now we can’t see the rest of the text, but looking at the table of contents for page 9 and 10 AND looking on the last page of the book for things to do DURING READING, I’m guessing that the rest of the book goes something like this;

9: Some flowers are pink.

10: Some flowers are for Mom.

Step 4: Evaluate your mentor text.

We can see that at this reading level, Kaeden Books uses:

A) Short sentences. 4 words per sentence with 1 sentence having 5 words.

B) Repetitive sentences with just one new word per sentence. Plus, each new word is a word kids learn in kindergarten. Not an upper-grade vocabulary word such as scientific or encyclopedia.

c) A surprise ending with the last sentence having a twist while using the same repeating part of the sentence.

Step 5: The Writing Exercise

A) Use the word “birds” and use color words such as the ones in FLOWERS.

B) Use short sentences of 3 or 4 words.

C) Repeat every sentence except change one word in each one.

D) Write 7 sentences and make the final one be a surprise ending.

Go ahead and post your sentences if you like and share what you’ve done! Don’t worry if yours is the exact same as someone else’s. (Of course, if you hit upon a super duper story that you’ve written, don’t post it here but save it to submit to Kaeden!) There’s only so many ways you can do this.

Then, in the week ahead as I’m taking time to carefully explain what each of the key points is on Kaeden’s writer’s guidelines, you can be working on more of these writing exercises on your own. Just look for different mentor texts at different reading levels and follow the 5 steps above.

Now, if you’re brand new to writing stories at specific reading levels, it might be helpful to read through my book Yes! You Can Learn How to Write Beginning Readers and Chapter Books and familiarize yourself with this market. If you don’t have it, you can read lots of it on Amazon on their look inside the book feature.

Filed under: Beginning Readers, Writing Exercise

Writing Opportunity: Let’s Get Organized!

For this new writing adventure we’re embarking on for pursuing our goal of earning income by submitting to Kaeden Books, a publisher who is LOOKING for new authors, I want to show you the step-by-step process I’m going through so you can do it, too.

After I explored their site yesterday and just clicked all over on random buttons and links, I decided it was time to get organized.

I thought I’d take pictures to show you EXACTLY what I’ve done so far. And since I set up our brand new playpen, I thought it would be the perfect place for a photo shoot!

Yes, that’s right! Life is filled with blessings right now in our family. Last Saturday our oldest son got married to our precious new daughter-in-law. It was such a lovely ceremony in a beautiful gazebo overlooking Laguna Beach. And NEXT Saturday we’re hosting a baby shower here at our house for our youngest son and his lovely wife who are expecting our very first grandchild!

As you can see in the photo above, I have a yellow pocket folder to organize. It’s like packing a suitcase for a journey. And this is a journey. So yes, while we’re pursuing this for the goal of income, always remember that the journey itself is very, very important.

We don’t know if we’ll actually land a contract with this publisher or not. God in his great wisdom knows what’s best. But what we DO know is that as we embark on this journey together, we will learn and grow as a writer. And that’s worth every step we take. Plus it’s gonna be lots and lots of fun!

So to get started, I like to get organized.

Here’s what I have inside my yellow pocket folder:

A spiral notebook. This is my current way to take notes and write first drafts. So I tucked an empty notebook in my pocket folder. This will probably not spend very much time inside here because it will be what I carry around with me all the places I go throughout my day in the upcoming weeks as I’m jotting down ideas and rough drafts and other notes.

A file folder labeled PRAYER. For each manuscript project I work on I like to have a prayer folder. I like to write out my prayers when I pray, kind of like writing love letters to God. So I got some pretty, cheerful paper to use and put it in this folder. Plus, I already wrote out a prayer. Not only am I praying for myself as I start out on this journey, but I’m also praying for YOU.

Behind that is a file folder labeled WRITER’S GUIDELINES. I printed out a copy of Kaeden Book’s writer’s guidelines and tucked it in here for easy reference. (We’ll go over that with a magnifying glass next week here on my blog.)

Behind that is a file folder labeled KAEDEN BOOKS. I printed out their home page and tucked it into here. This is because Kaeden Books is a brand new publisher for me. I don’t know anything about them. So I’ll be studying their home page to learn more about them. (We’ll go over this with a magnifying glass in upcoming posts as well.)

Behind that are a lot of empty folders. These are just waiting for me to fill them up with ideas and lists and…we’ll talk about that, too!

So if you haven’t yet done this, go ahead and get organized! Either use your own system that works for you or try out the system I use. There’s no right or wrong. It’s just very very helpful to get organized right up front so that you can find things at your fingertips when you need them.

Filed under: Beginning Readers, How-to Books for Writers, Inspiration

New Writing Adventure Right Here on My Blog

Oh, what an adventure I had the other day! I had taken a break from my frantic deadline to give my eyes, wrists, and brain a rest so of course, the first place I go is outside in my garden. There, to my surprise were three of the most beautiful and biggest butterflies ever! I looked them up and discovered they are giant swallowtails, the largest butterfly in North America. I had seen one here and there the last two years, but these ones danced and flitted and floated around our garden like it was their home. (I hope it is!!!!) So of course I snapped a photo…aren’t they gorgeous?

Writing has a lot of unexpected adventures like that. And right now, today, in my little corner of the writing world I’m starting out on another adventure, so I thought I’d invite you along.

For starters, recently here on my blog I’ve been sharing what’s been going on as I’ve been working on a super duper crazy deadline.

Guess what? Yesterday I finished writing that deadline. Wahoo! And about 2 hours after I finished typing the last page, an editor from a different publisher called me on the phone and we discussed the next part of the manuscript I needed to write to send her way for one of my books that is under contract. Talk about perfect timing!

Well, as I mentioned in a previous post, with that big deadline I’ve been crunching on nearing its end (I did one final edit on those 28 pages and submitted it this morning), I’ve been working on my TRIPLE CROWN OF SUCCESS.

As many of you know if you’ve read my how-to-book for writers YES! YOU CAN LEARN HOW TO WRITE CHILDREN’S BOOKS, GET THEM PUBLISHED, AND BUILD A SUCCESSFUL WRITING CAREER, this means I’m always working on 3 manuscripts at a time:

1 for the goal of getting published

1 for the goal of earning income

1 for the goal of personal fulfillment

So here’s where I’m at on this:

Sunday my husband and I were asked to write a really great and fun new project for our church. Bingo. There’s my new project for the goal of “personal fulfillment.”

Last week I got an idea to contact a monthly magazine/newsletter and offer to write them a column for whatever they might pay (I think it will either be no-pay or perhaps a year’s free subscription). Bingo. There’s my hopeful new project for the goal of “getting published.” If that doesn’t work out I’ll try a different publisher.

And today, yes TODAY!!!! I read in an e-mail post from the enews from the Institute of Children’s Literature (ICL) about Kaeden Books, an educational publisher who is LOOKING FOR WRITERS!!!!!!

So guess what? I’m going to pursue this new exciting lead for my goal of hopefully earning income.

So guess what again? Since Jan Fields was so generous and sent this shout out to everyone, I thought I’d send a shout out to everyone here on my blog to invite you to join me in this brand new adventure!

So here on my blog for however longs it takes, I’ll share with you the steps I’m taking to prepare stuff to submit to Kaeden Books to respond to their call out with their PARTICULAR need for children’s writers. We’re talking picture books. We’re talking nonfiction OR fiction. We’re talking early chapter books. We’re talking beginning readers. Does it get any sweeter than that?

So here’s what I did first thing. I clicked on the link to Kaeden Books to see exactly what they were looking for.

Then I printed out this information and put it in a file folder and started a pocket folder for this new adventure. I encourage you to do the same!

And now, I’m just spending time browsing through all the links and looking at the types of books they do. I encourage you to do the same!

So check back in here for my next post. I’ll let you know what the next steps I take on this new adventure to prepare a submission for them.

And if you want to join in the adventure, too, let us know so we can cheer each other on!!!!!

Filed under: Beginning Readers, How-to Books for Writers, Inspiration, Writing Tips