sutton052

Kevin Lewis! Kevin Lewis! Kevin Lewis! I'd never heard him speak before and he's been one of the highlights of my conference. He's a former editor, current agent and author, so he really knows every facet of the market as well as cares about craft. Run don't walk to any Kevin Lewis talk you can attend, he's also like Mem Fox in giving you a master class on how to read a story out loud. Here're a few of my favorite things I learned from Kevin about writing for toddlers: Keep it short. Understand that your audience is going to exhibit their cognitive abilities. You think your manuscript can be longer than Eric Carlie’s Very Hungry Caterpillar? Think again.  Make the reader (the parent) the star, and make it easy for them to star: Sound it out, toddlers are just getting to know rich language, sound words are delicious and fantastic to include. Study Denise Fleming 's (and Kevin's ) books for great sound words and onomatopoeia. Act it out. Give the parent ac...

Sara Sargent is an executive editor at HarperCollins Children's Books. She publishes fiction and nonfiction in our three main categories, PB, MG, and YA. She talked to us about publishing poetry for teens today, a subject that doesn't get a lot of coverage at SCBWI conferences. She started by showing us this wonderful poem by Sarah Kay: And she recommended the books of Rupi Kaur and Amanda Lovelace . And we talked about reasons for writing poetry: for its powerful compression, for its shareability, for its suitability to a culture with brief attention, and for the way it makes readers feel seen. Hip hop music and poetry are similar art forms. Teens sometimes don't think of poetry as music and music as poetry. Sara advised we dip our toes into hiphop, for example the work of Kendrick Lamar. To get teens excited about poetry, you have to make it about them. This is when they are exploring their identities, present and future, and what their place in the world is. SUBJECT MAT...