Yes! You Can Learn How To Write Children's Books, Get Them Published, And Build A Successful Writing Career »

In this ground-breaking book, best-selling and award-winning author Nancy I. Sanders shares insider’s tips and explains the secrets to landing a contract before you write one word of your manuscript -- even if you’re an inexperienced or unpublished children’s writer. Whether you’re just starting out or have numerous published credits to your name, Nancy teaches you how to manage your time and focus your energies so that you are writing each day with purpose in order to get published, earn an income, and satisfy your personal fulfillment as a writer. Follow Nancy’s step-by-step instructions, and you, too, can establish the foundation for building a successful career as a children’s writer. Yes! You can.

Children's Literature

The first of a projected series that will include titles about how to write beginning readers and chapter books, middle grade fiction and children's nonfiction, this title supplies the very basics a beginning writer ought to know before blasting off into the world of fame and fortune available to those who write for children. Unlike other titles in the genre (Ann Whitford Paul, Tracey Dils, Barbara Seuling, Aaron Shepard, Nancy Lamb, Jean Karl, Uri Shulevitz, Harold Underdown, Lesley Bolton) about how to write, illustrate, and sell your book for children, Nancy Sanders takes the approach that you need to sell the title before you've written it. She repeatedly emphasizes what she calls "The Triple Crown of Success: Using three separate strategies to meet three separate goals" q.v writing for personal fulfillment, writing to get published, writing to earn income—she says, is her "super-duper extra-special million-dollar secret." She encourages aspiring writers to sort and set priorities and to establish serious goals in terms of time-per-week devoted to the objective of getting published. She does cover most of the basics—how to write a query, how to write a cover letter, how to write a proposal. Mentions of SCBWI, Write4Kids, Children's Writer, and other helpful organizations are listed in the index and embedded in the text, with websites included. There are lots of references to Eve Heidi Bine-Stock's books about writing for children (perhaps because she is the publisher). All in all, it is an easily read title with lots of practical suggestions that will empower and connect beginning writers to their target: getting published. One of the ways Sanders suggests forwriters to do so is to set up a "writer's pyramid"; she assures the reader that "those who implement this model into their own schedule see valuable results." In the Writer's Pyramid are layers she calls the "no-pay/low-pay markets" you submit to relentlessly to build experience and clips; the "income" you build by targeting a publisher, studying its website, and brainstorming ideas that would fit into their product line; and then always working on "your own manuscript for personal fulfillment," your magnum opus. The Writer's Pyramid, Sanders says, "helps you manage your time and focus your energy on very specific purposes each day in your writing week as you pursue the Triple Crown of Success." This formula is repeated throughout the book in subsequent chapters, sometimes verbatim, which may be a really good idea for beginning writers. The goal of the book is to have the reader shout, "Yes I Can!" and fearlessly make it so. This would be an excellent title to choose if you work with aspiring young writers who want to try their hand at children's books. Includes list of recommended books, index, books by the author, glossary. Reviewer: Gwynne Spencer