home of author & poet E. Kristin Anderson

Posts in category picture books

National Poetry Month: Betsy Snyder: Haiku Love

Apr 30, 2013 2 Comments ~ Written by E. Kristin Anderson
National Poetry Month: Betsy Snyder: Haiku Love

While brainstorming ways to celebrate National Poetry Month, I suggested to my publicist the idea of me tweeting an original haiku a day, inviting others to play along for a chance to win a copy of my newest book I Haiku You. She loved the idea, and before I had time to second-guess myself, my haiku-a-day challenge was official. Uh-oh.

Writing a haiku a day probably doesn’t sound like a lofty goal, but I admit the prospect felt somewhat daunting. Yes, I am a published author—but that is also what scared me. When I write poetry collections, I have time to get the words just right. And when I need help, I have an editor. And as an illustrator myself, I also have my pictures to carry my words—we are a team. What would I do without my publishing perks? For the first time in a long time, I wouldn’t have anything or anyone to back me up. It would just be me and my seventeen syllables, floating out there in cyberspace. Eek.

More self-doubt set in. What if I couldn’t find the time to write every day? Would it become a chore? Would it feel forced? What if my haiku weren’t any good…would I be judged? Would I regret it?

~ read more ~
Posted in guest post, illustration, national poetry month, poetry, reading, writing - Tagged , , ,

National Poetry Month: YA Author Leanne Liberman Interviews Children’s Author & Poet Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang

Apr 24, 2013 6 Comments ~ Written by E. Kristin Anderson
National Poetry Month: YA Author Leanne Liberman Interviews Children’s Author & Poet Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang

Leanne Lieberman: One of my earliest memories of poetry was reading Ludwig Bemelman’s MADELINE out loud to myself to hear the rhymes. Do you have a memory of enjoying poetry as a child? Did you write poems when you were young?

Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang: I have always loved books and I do count picture books as poetry but I didn’t really read poetry until I was an adult. I think it’s part exposure, and part knowing how to find poetry that will resonate with you. Unfortunately poetry isn’t really taught in the schools anymore (especially Canadian poetry) so I think it’s harder and harder to nurture a love for poetry early on. That said, I do remember writing quite a lot of bad poetry. In fact, I can probably chronicle the stages of my poetry career here:

~ read more ~
Posted in author interviews, books, community, guest post, literature, national poetry month, poetry, reading, writing, YA - Tagged , , , , ,

National Poetry Month: Pat Schories: Illustrating FOREST, WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE?

Apr 23, 2013 Leave a Comment ~ Written by E. Kristin Anderson
National Poetry Month: Pat Schories: Illustrating FOREST, WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE?

I was absolutely delighted when I first read the manuscript for FOREST, WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE? I would be able to bring together my skills as an illustrator with my love of nature. As an added bonus, I found I knew the author, and further, was able to go walking in the actual forest she wrote this poem about!

There were three special challenges in illustrating this book; the forest had a voice; children appeared out of seemingly nowhere on the penultimate page; and there were lots of natural details to include on every spread.

I started with thumbnail sketches in a storyboard fashion, with 16 miniature spreads on one large piece of paper, so I could see the whole book all at once. As I sketched, I envisioned the “wood sprite” character dressed in green with a garland of leaves, to represent the voice of the forest. I agonized over how to get children to suddenly appear at the end of the book; could they be hiking in the forest and then appear in the foreground when called upon? Or maybe they could be hiding behind trees and pop out when needed?

~ read more ~
Posted in books, guest post, illustration, national poetry month, poetry, writing - Tagged , ,

National Poetry Month: Irene O’Garden: From Poetry to Picture Book

Apr 23, 2013 2 Comments ~ Written by E. Kristin Anderson
National Poetry Month: Irene O’Garden: From Poetry to Picture Book

I believe the solution to many problems lies in compassion. Compassion is born in the imagination, where we can walk a mile in someone else’s paws or pine trees, if you will.

This “Forest” grew out of an early set of my poems and my work with our regional River of Words program – a national program which connects kids with their watershed via poetry and art. Our local Land Trust (The Hudson Highlands Land Trust) wants to foster environmental stewardship in children. When they heard about River Of Words, they secured grants, hired a team of environmental educators (I’m the Poetry Instructor) and began to offer free workshops in our local schools.

One of my workshops uses my Voices Of Animals poems. Each first “person” poem explores an animal’s physical and emotional reality. I then ask children to select an animal and write one of their own.

~ read more ~
Posted in books, guest post, literature, national poetry month, poetry, writing - Tagged , , , , ,

National Poetry Month: Andrea Cheng: All Things in Verse!

Apr 18, 2013 3 Comments ~ Written by E. Kristin Anderson
National Poetry Month: Andrea Cheng: All Things in Verse!

One of my earliest memories is of my grandmother singing a nursery rhyme to me while I was falling asleep. It was a simple song, in Hungarian (the language we spoke at home), about a squirrel that climbed up a tree, holding a letter in its mouth, and the letter was for me! I still remember the words and how happy I felt when I heard her soothing voice.

I started writing poems of my own almost as soon as I could write. I remember trying to find rhyming words for the ends of the lines and working hard to make the rhythm work. One of my favorite birthday presents was a blue notebook from my sister. On the front she wrote: For Your Poems. (see pictures) I carefully copied my poems into this notebook for all of third grade. I would fall asleep at night thinking of new poems to add the following morning.

When I started writing for children, the stories often came to me in short lines but I felt like in order to publish them, I would have to write them in prose. Then on a whim, I sent Louise May, my editor at Lee and Low, a narrative in seven verses called Shanghai Moments. “Can you write more?” she asked me in an e-mail. This became my first book written in verse, SHANGHAI MESSENGER, illustrated by Ed Young. Since then, I have published two other books in verse, WHERE THE STEPS WERE, and my new book, ETCHED IN CLAY.

~ read more ~
Posted in books, culture, guest post, literature, middle grade, national poetry month, nonfiction, poetry, writing, YA - Tagged , , , , ,

National Poetry Month: Karen Dolby: Why Nursery Rhymes Matter

Apr 11, 2013 1 Comment ~ Written by Guest Blogger
National Poetry Month: Karen Dolby: Why Nursery Rhymes Matter

In my earliest memory, I am lying in a white-painted cot in a darkened bedroom. I am not well (I had measles when I was just eighteen months old) and my mother is reading to me: a book of nursery rhymes that we pored over together many times throughout my childhood. I remember the cover, the pictures, the way it smelt, and most of all I remember the rhymes. And I’m probably not unusual in this – for many of us, nursery rhymes are the first verses we hear, the first lines we learn by heart.

The rhythm of the words and lines, the tunes, the images and tales they conjure are a wonderful introduction to the joy of language and storytelling but nursery rhymes are also so much more besides. The majority are anonymous, part of an oral tradition of folk memories and stories passed on from generation to generation linking us to the past.

~ read more ~
Posted in books, guest post, literature, middle grade, national poetry month, poetry, reading, writing - Tagged , , ,

National Poetry Month: Amy Ludwig VanDerwater: FOREST HAS A SONG, Reprise

Apr 03, 2013 1 Comment ~ Written by Guest Blogger
National Poetry Month: Amy Ludwig VanDerwater: FOREST HAS A SONG, Reprise

For me, writing poems is a bit like hiking. Work. Rest. Work. Look around. Rest. Turn over a log and see what’s there. Work. Then, afterward….remember.

FOREST HAS A SONG (Clarion, 2013) is my first children’s poetry book, written by my inner seven-year-old. I’ve always kept scraps of poems here and there, but it wasn’t until 2007 that I began putting some of those scraps together. Each poem in this book honors some small moment that I’ve experienced in the woods: wondering at a pile of bones, listening to tree whispers, watching dusk fall.
I would not have written these poems if I wasn’t married to Mark, a wise science teacher who taught me that you can really eat wintergreen leaves and that chickadees do eat from patient hands. He taught me, and he taught our three children too.

~ read more ~
Posted in books, guest post, literature, national poetry month, poetry, reading, writing - Tagged , , , ,

International Women’s Week: Ammi-Joan Paquette: If the Hat Fits…

Mar 07, 2013 4 Comments ~ Written by Guest Blogger
International Women’s Week: Ammi-Joan Paquette: If the Hat Fits…

If variety is the spice of life, then—when it comes to my work ethic, at least—wearing a variety of “hats” is the productivity of life. Setting aside for a moment the somewhat awkward wordfeel, not to mention how I’ve butchered that time-honored quotation, for me it’s the honest truth.

There is a certain type of person who thrives on long blocks of interrupted work time. Once they wade all the way into that churning creative flow, they might write or revise for hours without ever coming up for air, producing reams of high-quality, inspirational prose. Me? I am not that person.

I started writing seriously (that is, with an eye toward publication) when my children were young. So, by necessity my writing time consisted of little stolen quarter-hours here and there. I think at this point, if I were faced with an eight-hour writing period, I wouldn’t know what on earth to do with it.

~ read more ~
Posted in books, community, feminism, guest post, International Women's Week, literature, middle grade, publishing, reading, writing, YA - Tagged , , , , , , , ,

International Women’s Week: Molly Beth Griffin: WriterMom — Writing with kids, inspired by kids, in spite of kids

Mar 06, 2013 2 Comments ~ Written by Guest Blogger
International Women’s Week: Molly Beth Griffin: WriterMom — Writing with kids, inspired by kids, in spite of kids

It is not at all true anymore that writing is a man’s profession. Thankfully women have broken into the world of literature despite centuries of exclusion, and in my chosen field—children’s and young adult literature—women actually make up a majority of today’s voices. And many, maybe even most, of these women writers are moms. Motherhood is considered a valuable part of the human experience, useful to the story spinner in a hundred ways. But what isn’t immediately obvious is that most of these WriterMoms are moms of older kids. Their kids are in school full time, at college, or even grown up with kids of their own.

What is more rare is the WriterMom who writes with a baby on the breast or a toddler underfoot. Or, heaven forbid, both. It’s not rocket science to figure out why this is the case. It’s hard to write in the snippets of time you (might) get to yourself, in space carved out from blocks and bananas and burp rags, in a brain that is foggy from sleep deprivation and a body that is charged with wacky hormones.

~ read more ~
Posted in books, community, culture, guest post, International Women's Week, literature, writing, YA - Tagged , ,

Nat’l Poetry Month: Guest Post from Molly Beth Griffin: Genre Bending – Writing Poetic Prose for Kids

Apr 27, 2012 3 Comments ~ Written by Guest Blogger
Nat’l Poetry Month: Guest Post from Molly Beth Griffin: Genre Bending – Writing Poetic Prose for Kids

“Oh! You’re a writer? What do you write?” Well. I wrote stories and poems as a kid; was deep into SLAM as a teenager; transitioned to creative nonfiction in college; focused on picture books in graduate school and published one; and now I have a young adult novel coming out. So I’m never sure how [...]

~ read more ~
Posted in books, guest post, literature, poetry, reading, writing, YA - Tagged , ,
←

EKA

E. Kristin Anderson grew up in Westbrook, Maine and is a graduate of Connecticut College. She has a fancy diploma that says “B.A. in Classics,” which makes her sound smart but has not helped her get any jobs in Ancient Rome. Ms. Anderson is the co-editor of Dear Teen Me, an anthology based on the popular website. Her poetry has been published worldwide in many magazines and she is an assistant YA and Children’s editor at Hunger Mountain. Once upon a time she worked at The New Yorker. Look out for Ms. Anderson's work in the forthcoming anthology Coin Opera II, a collection of poems about video games from Sidekick Books and Futuredaze, an anthology of YA SciFi from Underwords. She now lives in Austin, TX and blogs at EKristinAnderson.com and MetreMaids.com. She is represented by Christina Hogrebe at the Jane Rotrosen Agency.

View Full Profile →

Follow @ek_anderson!

Follow Me on Twitter

Powered by Twitter Tools

May 2013
S M T W T F S
« Apr    
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  

NaNoWriMo Badges