Picture Book University, Week Six

Let’s write a snapshot picture book!

Week 6, Day 1

Step 1: Decide what kind of snapshot picture book you want to write.

A concept book? Concepts might include the alphabet, counting, shapes, colors, transportation, sounds, emotions, days of the week, hours of the day, chores, games, anything that is a classification, a grouping of similar things.

Or maybe you want to write about the sequence of actions that make up an event.

Or a procedure, the steps to doing something.

Decide what you want to do.

Week 6, Day 2

Step 2:  Decide what your snapshot book is going to have snapshots of. What’s it going to be about? For example, if you chose to do an alphabet book, what kind of alphabet?

One easy way to come up with a lot of ideas is to just take random nouns and concepts and put them together with your topic.

For example, “trees”. The tree alphabet book, the tree counting book, the tree shape book, the tree transportation book.

The tree alphabet might include an alphabetical listing of all the creatures that come to live in a tree. Or an alphabetical listing of things that can be made out of a tree, or of people who sit under the tree, or of types of trees, or of things that look like trees.

The tree transportation book could be about the different modes of transportation that are involved in cutting down the tree, transporting the log to the sawmill, transporting the lumber, transporting the furniture, transporting it to your home.

The tree procedure book,  or how to grow a tree, would take you step-by-step through the process of watching your tiny seedling grow into a giant oak.

(My So Many Bunnies is an alphabet book of names, a counting book of the letters of the alphabet, and a book of places where bunnies can sleep.)

Week 6, day 3

Step 3: Decide on the direction of your story. How is your story going to move forward from the beginning to the end?

Alphabet books and some other concept books have natural movement, but even they can have additional movement that will help make the story more appealing. Is the alphabet a story? Does it get progressively more outrageous? Is your counting leading to an event? Is it the countdown for a rocket launch? Most of the topics that you could have chosen will have a natural sequence, but if you can add an additional overlying sequence, a direction, a motion, it will make the story more fun.

(So Many Bunnies goes from A to Z, 1 to 26, and travels throughout the bunnies’ house and yard.)

Week 6, day 4

Step 4: Choose what is going to represent each snapshot. What will A stand for? B? 3? Blue? Circle? One of the easiest ways to do this is simply to dive into reference books. A dictionary. A rhyming book. An encyclopedia. Find lists of the types of things you’re looking for and browse down them until you find just the items you want.

(For names I looked in baby name books. The numbers I knew . For sleeping locations, I looked in rhyming dictionaries, searching for words that rhymed with the names I had chosen, and that were places that the bunnies could sleep. If I couldn’t find a good rhymed sleeping place, I had to go back and choose another name.)

Week 6, Day 5

Step 6: Write each snapshot. Decide what the formula will be, and fit each of the items from day 4 into the formula.

(“One was named Abel. He slept on the table.
Two his named Blair. She slept on the chair.”)

Week 6, Day 6

Step 6: Okay, sometimes you have to work on Saturday. Does your story need a framework? Think of one, something that gets the reader into the story, something that gets the reader out of the story. Next week more tips for making your story brilliant.

( So Many Bunnies begins, “Old Mother Rabbit, she lives in a shoe. She has 26 children and knows what to do. She feeds him some broth, and gives them some bread, then kisses them gently and put them to bed.” And it ends, “Old Mother Rabbit, she lives in a shoe. She has 26 children and plenty to do. She tucks them all in, from Abel to Zed, Then curls herself up in a soft feather bed.” And then the very last scene shows all of the little bunnies climbing into bed with Mom.)