I've had the second lesson in my Writing for Children class. If I count correctly, there are about 30 people in the class. We're sharing our favorite picture books at the moment. The assignment is to read various picture books.
I found one which was a perfect rewrite of "Little Black Sambo". The only things changed were that the black boy was turned into a white girl and the tigers were changed into rattlesnakes. That book made me really angry. "Little Black Sambo" is on the banned book list. I've always wondered what was so wrong with the story. As it turns out, nothing was wrong with the STORY. The problem was the name of the boy and the illustrations. The story is perfectly fine. Maybe I should revisit some other banned books and rewrite them!
Also, I sort of knew about wordless books, but I never really looked at them. I never had my own babies or taught a young enough crowd of children for those books to be important to me. When I was in college, I wrote a children's picture book and made up the illustrations. The story came very near to being accepted, but the editor told me the story was too short. What if I can get the illustrations published as a wordless book?
I keep getting ideas and I know enough to write them down on scraps of paper, if nothing better. I'm keeping my ideas in a file folder while I immerse myself in more children's books. Soon - I hope - I will start organizing my thoughts and write up several stories. I remember one summer when I wrote 5 children's books in 10 weeks. Here we go again.
I'm planning to get published again and again - God willing. At least I will make a valiant attempt.
If I should vanish from this blog for a while, at least you'll know what I'm up to.
Thanks for visiting with me.
Kathi Linz
I found one which was a perfect rewrite of "Little Black Sambo". The only things changed were that the black boy was turned into a white girl and the tigers were changed into rattlesnakes. That book made me really angry. "Little Black Sambo" is on the banned book list. I've always wondered what was so wrong with the story. As it turns out, nothing was wrong with the STORY. The problem was the name of the boy and the illustrations. The story is perfectly fine. Maybe I should revisit some other banned books and rewrite them!
Also, I sort of knew about wordless books, but I never really looked at them. I never had my own babies or taught a young enough crowd of children for those books to be important to me. When I was in college, I wrote a children's picture book and made up the illustrations. The story came very near to being accepted, but the editor told me the story was too short. What if I can get the illustrations published as a wordless book?
I keep getting ideas and I know enough to write them down on scraps of paper, if nothing better. I'm keeping my ideas in a file folder while I immerse myself in more children's books. Soon - I hope - I will start organizing my thoughts and write up several stories. I remember one summer when I wrote 5 children's books in 10 weeks. Here we go again.
I'm planning to get published again and again - God willing. At least I will make a valiant attempt.
If I should vanish from this blog for a while, at least you'll know what I'm up to.
Thanks for visiting with me.
Kathi Linz
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