NF PB Journey: Mentor Text

Well, I’ve come to a screeching halt.

You see, there are many more wonderful nonfiction picture books at Charlesbridge that I could continue evaluating and posting rubrics for.

But I’ve decided not to.

Why? Because I found the mentor text I want to use. Yep. It’s DIRTY RATS?

Here’s what so great about this picture book as a mentor text:

It’s a great “breakthrough” format. Meaning it’s a good example of a text that I feel could be a great nonfiction picture book manuscript to experience breakthrough for a first time contract with a publisher I’ve not yet worked with.
It’s got a solid plot structure and (without actually having plotted its structure yet) it looks like it follows the 3-Act structure really well.
It’s a simple and straight-forward approach to a nonfiction topic, so I feel I can experience success using this as a guide to write my own nonfiction picture book.

So if you want to follow along with me in the next few weeks as I use this book as my mentor text and share the journey I’m taking, head on over to your local library and get a copy. Or purchase it at your favorite indie bookstore. Or buy it used or new on Amazon.

And since I’m sharing in real time what I’m doing to try to experience breakthrough with a nonfiction picture book at Charlesbridge publishers, I wanted to explain that right now I have 4 goals for the manuscript I’m planning on writing based on this mentor text.

GOAL #1. Write the first draft of a brand new nonfiction picture book manuscript from beginning to end.

GOAL #2. Take this manuscript to my critique group.

GOAL #3. Submit a polished manuscript to Charlesbridge.

GOAL #4. Simultaneously submit it to 5-10 other nonfiction picture book publishers who are currently taking unsolicited manuscripts. CLICK HERE to see a list of these potential publishers.

If you want to share in these goals, I’d be thrilled to have you join along!

But I can already hear some of you saying, “Wait! I don’t belong to a critique group!”

So just hold on tight…we’ll talk about that in my next post!

 

Filed under: Mentor Text, Nonfiction, Picture Books