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Bonny Becker, children’s book author and editor, shared her experiences on both ends of the book. Bonny has been writing for fifteen years and has six children’s books published to date: Just a Minute (Simon & Schuster, 2003), An Ant’s Day Off (Simon & Schuster, 2003), My Brother, the Robot (Dutton, 2001), Tickly Prickly (HarperCollins, 1999), The Christmas Crocodile (Simon & Schuster, 1998), and The Quiet Way Home (Henry Holt and Company, 1995). Bonny also published a short story in the collection On Her Way, for ‘tweens. She started her freelance editorial services for children’s book
authors three years ago. (It's hard to make a living as a children’s book
author unless you hit the jackpot!) Children’s Book Writing
Bonny started out in
journalism, but when she realized she wanted to be a fiction writer, she got her
MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. She wrote adult
short stories for a while, but that "didn’t go anywhere,” she says. She
realized that she had gotten into writing because of the books she read as a
child, so she switched her focus to children’s books. Since Bonny was doing
corporate writing to support herself at that time, writing children’s books
worked well, since she had only short chunks of time to devote to her creative
work. Bonny wrote about ten
picture books before getting her first, The Quiet Way Home, published.
She credits the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI)
and writing conferences for helping her succeed. SCBWI has local chapters and
is, according to Bonny, a very generous organization. Bonny read her first
picture book manuscript at an SCBWI meeting and got the response “That’s an
interesting story, but it’s not a book.” SCBWI meetings and critique groups
helped her better understand the fundamentals of children’s books. Writing
conferences introduced her to editors and agents and gave her a much clearer
picture of particular editors’ likes and styles (something she says you
can’t glean from books that list editors). Children’s Book Editing
Bonny got into children’s
book editing slowly and "by accident." Writers kept asking her to
critique their manuscripts, but she usually didn’t have time due to the fact
that she was having to support herself as a corporate writer. So writers offered
to pay for her services, but even then she resisted, not wanting the time she
spent on others’ manuscripts to interfere with her own writing. At some point,
she decided to try it and really liked it. A couple of years ago she got serious
about freelancing as a children’s book editor and hired a professional to
design her brochure. To market herself as a
freelance children’s book editor, Bonny has gotten her name out by publishing
an article in the Children’s Writers and Illustrators Market Book, titled
“Lost in the Woods of Plot? Here’s a Way Out.” She plans to devote more
time to this in the near future. Her Web site has also helped,
www.bonnybecker.com, which features her books and services. She has been
interviewed on Web sites and has gotten to know a lot of people in the industry
via the Web. She did a presentation at SCBWI this year and got some clients from
that. She gets most of her clients from word of mouth, though. Bonny charges by the
project. Some children’s book editors work more as coaches and charge by the
hour, offering feedback on work and walking clients through the process. She
says that the biggest challenge as an editor is giving feedback--“saying it in
a way that a writer can hear it.” Some writers are defensive or send a
manuscript in hopes of being discovered. But writing children’s books is hard
work. All books need to go through numerous revisions to get to the point where
they work. Bonny never discourages writers, nor does she tell them whether she
thinks a book will sell; this isn’t her job. She says that about five of the
authors she’s worked with have been published, but she doesn’t take credit.
It’s still a great feeling, though—she truly loves working with authors. Children’s Book Genres
Bonny says that if you
write or edit children’s books, it’s important to know the different genres
in the field because they drive the language, format, and subject matter of a
story. The various levels are listed below:
The Process
Regarding her experience as
a children’s book writer, Bonny says that just about all of her books have
been "orphaned" (because editors at publishing houses come and go so
often). An Ant’s Day Off had three different editors and took four
years to publish. The reason children’s books can take so long to publish is
that an illustrator has to be matched, and it can take about a year just to
print a book. Regarding her process,
Bonny says that she writes lots of drafts and that it can take her many years to
write a book. The Christmas Crocodile started as a poem and took her ten
years from start to finish. Other books, like Just a Minute, came to her
a lot faster. Bonny says that a critique group can be instrumental in helping an
author get it right and that it is essential to have at least one good reader of
your work, someone who can tell you when a story is working and when it isn’t.
Another way to learn is to read books. Many children’s picture book authors
will check out ten a week. This is a good way to absorb structure. Bonny offered the following
considerations for children’s book authors:
Once a book is accepted,
the amount of editing varies. Bonny says that An Ant’s Day Off changed
quite a bit, whereas The Christmas Crocodile hardly changed at all. The
author sees the illustrations all through the process, beginning with the
original sketches, and can make corrections and suggestions throughout. Whether
or not an illustrator is open to suggestions differs. Caldecott winner David
Small illustrated The Christmas Crocodile and was a pleasure to work
with. Not only was he open to suggestions, he also made some great suggestions
himself that resulted in minor changes to the text that Bonny really likes. The
Christmas Crocodile, published by Simon & Schuster in 1998, continues to
do well. It was a featured review in The New York Times Book Review and
was read on NPR by Daniel Pinkwater and on national television. For more about Bonny and her books, go to www.bonnybecker.com. Resources from Bonny
Web sites §
Harold Underdown’s Purple Crayon
Web site: www.underdown.org §
Roxyanne Young’s SmartWriters
Web site: www.smartwriters.com §
Verla Kay’s Web site:
www.verlakay.com §
Society for Children’s Book
Writers & Illustrators: www.scbwi.org Instruction §
Numerous classes at local
community colleges and the University of Washington §
Correspondence classes from the
Institute of Children’s Literature: www.institutechildrenslit.com Books §
Writing with Pictures: How to
Write and Illustrate Children’s Books by
Uri Shulevitz §
Writing and Publishing Books
for Children in the 1990s: The Inside Story from the Editor’s Desk
by Olga Litowinsky §
How to Write a Children’s
Book and Get It Published by Barbara
Seuling §
The Uses of Enchantment: The
Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales by
Bruno Bettelheim §
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions
on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott §
If You Want to Write: A Book
About Art, Independence and Spirit by
Brenda Ueland --Angela
J. Fountas, notetaker extraordinaire
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