Welcome to my blog (scroll down to see individual posts), which was originally on a separate site at Inkygirl.com. I also have a separate Inkygirl newsletter on Substack at debbieohi.substack.com.
Also see: Inkygirl interviews – Resources
According to a Time interview with Kathryn Stockett, The Help was rejected 60 times by agents before being picked up by Susan Ramer at Don Congdon. The book was Kathryn’s debut as a novelist and took her five years to complete. Since it came out in 2009, The Help has been published in 35 countries . . .
Barney Saltzberg is the author and illustrator of close to 50 books for children, including Beautiful Oops!, Arlo Needs Glasses, Andrew Drew and Drew, and the bestselling Touch and Feel Kisses series with over one million copies in print. Not only that, but he’s also recorded four albums of music for young people (!). See the . . .
I’ve added a new print-ready poster to my For The Love Of Reading page: You can download the poster here. For more free print-ready literacy posters, activity sheets, bookmarks and more, see For The Love Of Reading. You can also browse my full Print-Ready Archive for teachers, librarians and young readers.
“Picture books create readers from ground up. Don’t rush children out of them.” – Jarrett J. Krosoczka.
I cannot resist a middle grade novel with unique/cool technology as a hook, so was intrigued by the basic synopsis of SIX by M. M. Vaughan (Margaret K. McElderry, 2015): Parker and his sister Emma, with the help of secret advanced technology, can communicate between themselves through their thoughts. When their father . . .
I love what Stephen King said about not waiting for one’s Muse to show up. “Don’t wait for the muse. As I’ve said, he’s a hardheaded guy who’s not susceptible to a lot of creative fluttering. This isn’t the Ouija board or the spirit-world we’re talking about here, but just . . .
It’s been a while since I’ve awarded the Incredibly Prestigious and Exquisitely Ephemeral Golden Marmot Award, but this week it NEEDS to go to Chuck Wendig for this wonderful tweet. In addition to following @ChuckWendig on Twitter, I encourage you to read his Terribleminds blog. (*** To those offended by strong language: be warned that Chuck embraces it. . . .
In addition to being a debut picture book author, Christian Trimmer is an editor at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. I love his enthusiasm for kidlit/YA on his Twitter feed, plus he’s edited some pretty amazing books. Like THE DEATH AND LIFE OF ZEBULON FINCH by Daniel Kraus (here’s what I posted about . . .
For those interested, the Font Nerd Table comic above is now available as a greeting card in my card shop. I do admit that I over-used Comic Sans and Papyrus when they first came out. Fontfaces are so much like fashion, aren’t they? You have the basic fontfaces which never seem . . .