The Unwritten: What You Don't Say When Writing Picture Books (A Free Webinar)
"The Unwritten" was "broadcast" in early 2017, but we are maintaining this page because the recording is available.
You may have heard that we are offering a webinar, "Revising and Re-Imagining Your Picture Book Manuscript," and you're interested, but not sure you want to spend the money on it, and not certain you'll like the whole webinar thing anyway.
That's fine, because we are offering this one for free as a useful, free-standing introduction to the course and our approach. We're not going to pretend that we don't want you to sign up for "Revising and Re-Imagining" after you experience this one, but you're under no obligation to do so, and we do promise you an hour's worth of useful information, insight, discussion, tools, resources, and more, including a lively question-and-answer time.
What can you expect in this one? We want to answer a basic question: How does a picture book work? Is there a simple formula? An approach that works every time? That would be nice, but we don't think so. We do have some key insights into how picture books work, which in turn lead to a tool you can use to get a sense of how your picture book is working, and we plan to present them in this free webinar.
- We will start with a quick introduction to reader response theory, an alternative theory for understanding reading, and a doorway into children's books generally and picture books in particular.
- We'll show how reader response works by reading and discussing excerpts from The Snowy Day and Sophie's Squash.
- And that will lead us to the unwritten story--what's left out of the story by the writer but brought to it by the reader.
- Finally, we'll look at how to analyze your unwritten story, using The Snowy Day again as an example.
- You'll take away some insight and a tool to use, and a sense of what to expect from a KBR webinar.
Of course, we will also give you a preview of topics in our upcoming "Revising and Re-Imagining Your Picture Book Manuscript" webinar and explain the special discounted critique we are offering to participants in that course.
Throughout this free webinar, you'll also be able to chat with other participants and ask questions that we will answer as we go or at the end. We may even use your questions to inform what we cover in the full webinar series. And yes, you can expect us to make a pitch for you to sign up for "Revising and Re-Imagining Your Picture Book Manuscript," but we won't be doing the hard sell. We think you'll like what you experience in this free webinar so much you'll want to sign up for the series. But whether you do or not, we look forward to sharing tips and tools with you in "The Unwritten" (and did we mention that it's free?)
For more information, check the FAQ for the PB webinar--Frequently asked questions: You may find your questions answered on this page.
Our backgrounds:
Eileen Robinson published both fiction and nonfiction as an Executive Editor at Scholastic, as well as at Harcourt. She got her start in educational publishing in classroom and school and library and moved on to work with magazines, book clubs, book fairs and Scholastic trade, helping to create product that could work across markets.
Now an editorial consultant, she works with both published and unpublished authors on picture books through young adult novels, and helps them strengthen their writing and get published. She also consults with publishers on manuscripts before they go to press. Eileen created the site F1rstPages.com to help authors and partnered with Harold Underdown to provide online tutorials at Kids Book Revisions (kidsbookrevisions.com), where you can get the benefit of two professional editors simultaneously. She recently launched Move Books, a children's book publisher dedicated to moving boys to read.
Harold Underdown is an independent editor; he does critiques, helps to develop manuscripts, and provides other editorial and consulting services for individuals and publishers.
Harold wrote The Complete Idiot's Guide to Children's Book Publishing, now in its third edition. He founded and runs "The Purple Crayon," a respected web site with information about the children's publishing world at www.underdown.org. He speaks and gives workshops through the Highlights Foundation, SCBWI's national and regional conferences, and Kid's Book Revisions (offering online and on-site tutorials and workshops in partnership with Eileen Robinson).
As an in-house editor, he worked at Macmillan, Orchard, and Charlesbridge, and has experience in trade and educational publishing.