Wednesday, October 16, 2024
A Biography to Inspire Future Astronauts!
Wednesday, October 2, 2024
Children's Book Festivals ~ tips from Christy Mihaly
Meeting a young festival-goer |
Books and Book Creators
Book Festivals come in many flavors. I've attended mostly children's book festivals. Other festivals focus on science fiction or nonfiction or mysteries ... while some welcome all books and authors. Some are a single day; others are multi-day affairs.
I got to participate in the Children's Literature Festival, Truman State Univ. (MO) 2023 |
Some festivals, like the Children's Literature Festival at Truman State, Missouri, bring in students from local schools as part of the program. All participating authors present to them.
The main festival ingredient is always -- of course -- books. And authors and illustrators. And book lovers.
Below I'm sharing a few things to know about children's book festivals.
A common book festival format involves row upon row of authors sitting at long tables with piles of their books in a gym or outdoors under tents. Visitors swarm past and pause to scan books and meet authors. Authors and illustrators may sell books and sign them.
If this sounds grim for a book creator, it isn't! I've found festivals are a great opportunity to engage with the people that we write for -- kids and their adults. I've enjoyed many interactions and learned a lot about what works and doesn't work in books, and what kinds of books kids are looking for.
Warwick Children's Book Festival (NY) on a chilly fall day, 2022 |
And Other Stuff
Most festivals feature readings, author interviews, and/or special events and activities for kids. Many have great music. There are often story times or workshops.
I recently participated in the Bath Book Bash, in Maine, a children's book festival that featured a children's costume parade and contest -- so cool! There was also a speed-drawing contest in which three illustrators made a series of quick sketches in response to prompts. You wouldn't want to miss that! There were also a variety of workshops: I offered a poetry workshop, other authors shared crafts, and illustrators taught drawing tips. And, as a bonus -- I was seated next to fellow GROGger Fran Hodgkins, whom I know online but had not yet met in real life!
The multi-day Fall for the Book Festival, held on the campus of George Mason University in Virginia, draws big-name authors of adult books. There are kids' books too as part of a children's program. The children's authors provide presentations and offer craft activities on Saturday.
Bath Book Bash parade! Maine ~2024 |
Tips for Attending (as a Book Fan)
Author Maria Gianferrari entertaining kids at Fall for the Book 2018 (she showed me the festival ropes!) |
Tips for Participating Authors
Catching up with author friend Laurie Wallmark at the Rye (NY) Children's Book Festival |
Modeling my "author shirt" at Bookstock, in Woodstock VT ("Pay no attention to my browsing history ... I'm a writer ...) |
Some of the many book festivals around the country are collected in this listing -- but there are plenty more.
Feel free to leave a comment with your favorite book festival -- and add any tips or pointers you may have. And thanks for reading!
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
Don't Get Punk'd by Common Punctuation Troublemakers
by Fran Hodgkins
If you’re like most people, your reaction of punctuation questions is either to utter a polite “ugh!” or to run screaming from the room. If you’re not like most people, though, you’re celebrating the upcoming release of the Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition, and feeling a bit giddy with excitement.
Alas, I fall into the second group. My family doesn’t talk about me much.
Seriously, though, while some of us love it, for many people punctuation is a necessary evil. However, if poorly used, it can stop an editor from finishing your manuscript. Some people will take exception to that statement, saying that a good idea will find a home, no matter how poorly punctuated or grimly ungrammatical.
To which I reply: why take the chance? With publishers getting literally thousands of submissions, don’t you want to give your manuscript the best chance? You may have a purebred Golden Retriever in the dog show but should at least bathe him before he greets the judges.
So, here’s a refresher course on punctuation marks.
The period, or full stop. This dot ends a sentence. That’s its whole job. Its reason for existence. You express a complete thought, and then, boom – end with a period. Problem is, some people get a bit carried away and forget the period. They create a run-on sentence, which is two complete thoughts connected by nothing but good wishes.
I took my dog to the park my car broke down on the way.
Two things are going on: taking the dog to the part and the car breaking down. Something’s missing. A connection (such as a coordinate conjunction, like “but”), or a stop sign – a period.
I took my dog to the park. My car broke down on the way.
Periods can easily be overlooked. Folks of a Certain Age or who have old keyboards may hit the comma when they want the period. MS Word has a new quirk where it will insert periods when you don’t want them. Be wary when proofreading!
Quotation marks. These are the friendly little curly guys who tell readers when someone it talking. They always come in pairs: “ at the beginning and ” at the end. They seem innocent enough, but when end punctuation gets involved, quotation marks can be difficult to control.
In the United States, the rule is that when the period, exclamation mark, or question mark goes with the dialog, it goes “inside” the quotation mark:
She cried, “Stop, thief!”
The postal worker asked, “Did you pick up your package?”
David said, “I’ll be there eventually.”
That’s straightforward and easy to remember. But when the end punctuation does not go with the spoken words, but is actually part of the larger statement, things can get messy:
Did you hear David say, “I won’t be there after all”?
David had the nerve to say, “I won’t be there after all”!
A related trickster is the single quotation mark. It is used to enclose a quote within a quote. For example, David said, “I’ll be ‘sick’ and unable to attend.” Easy enough, right? But let’s move those little stinkers to the end of the sentence:
She said, “David was unable to attend because he was ‘sick’!”
There’s a lot of punctuating going on at the end of that sentence: single quote, word, single quote, exclamation point, and closing double quotes – whew!
Let’s wrap up with one of the most often abused punctuation marks: the apostrophe. I have heard this mark called the “Flying Comma” and I approve.
The apostrophe forms contractions. It takes the place of dropped letters, as in isn’t, let’s, don’t.
It can also form some possessives, but not all possessives use an apostrophe.
Wait, say that again.
The basic pattern is like this:
cat (singular) cat’s (possessive) cats (plural) cats’ (plural possessive)
Here’s a helpful list:
Apostrophe No apostrophe
boy’s (possessive) his (possessive)
girls’ (plural possessive) their (plural possessive)
building’s (possessive) buildings (plural)
it’s (contraction) its (possessive)
One job that apostrophes don’t do is to form plurals.
Are you going to turn in a perfect manuscript? Alas, no—and nor should you expect to. We are not machines, so somewhere in every manuscript lurks a misplaced apostrophe or an overactive comma. We do the best we can with the tools at hand, and still our editors and copy editors find things. That’s OK (it’s their job, anyway!). Spotting and fixing these common errors can never hurt your manuscript’s changes.
And may the odds be ever in your favor!