FLASHLIGHT NIGHT

FLASHLIGHT NIGHT: Rhyming picture book to take out to the tree house

FLASHLIGHT NIGHT

by Matt Forrest Essenwine with artwork by Fred Koehler

Suppose that I want to write a friendship

picture book adventure.

It will come alive through three important elements.

 Let's say these are -

backyard

flashlight

tree house

And to up the stakes for me as a writer,

let's say I'll pull it off in rhyme.

Beautiful rhyme. Not just rhyme for when you play word games at home.

You know what I mean. The beautiful quality of
the low percent of submitted rhymed manuscripts that can become traditionally published

Hmmm.

I hope you'll sit down soon with the rhyming picture book, FLASHLIGHT NIGHT.

The text is by debut picture book author Matt Forrest Essenwine

& the art is from the well-known award-winning creator, Fred Koehler.

This is a poem story alive with the promise

of high adventure unfolding

in the sedate backyard tree house. The friends 

flash the light to discover that it:

Shines a path where waters rush

reveals a hole in the underbrush

Oh my gosh! What's next? Don't 'cha wanna know!!!

The illustrations by Fred Koehler are like a nocturne gallery. 
The nightshade from scene to scene heightens the child’s delight in overlooked 
but important clues. I went back to look at them up close, as soon as

I read this book about the adventures & friendship of a girl and two boys. 

To celebrate publication, the two creators agreed to tell me something about their childhoods.

MATT FORREST ESSENWINE

“Hi, thank you for doing a post, Jan! I really appreciate that.”

                                   (The book deserves a lot of spotlight, Matt.- jga)

“Growing up in rural New Hampshire, I developed an appreciation for nature from a young age.

 We lived on 10 acres of mostly wooded property, and although I was not allowed to go 
deep into the woods, the woods were all around me and therefore afforded me a great 
opportunity to use my imagination.

"I never had a tree house as a child, but I did have something I called my “hideout,”
which was an area just off of our lawn that consisted of lots of large, flat stones, thick juniper bushes, 
and a couple of large, easily-climbed trees. Some days I would pretend I was a bad guy 
hiding from the law, while other days I was the good guy trying to track down the baddies.

My hideout was also my “secret” place to have lunch. Mom would give me my food 
and I would head out to one of the flat rocks there and eat underneath the tree. 
And even though this little area was right along the edge of the lawn and only 
15 feet or so away from the road, I felt like I was in my own little world!

"I suppose it is no wonder, then, that the natural world and my sense of family have
 played such crucial roles in my writing, both for adults as well as for children. 
I am fortunate that dad has not sold the place yet – at 82, he still lives on that same 
old dirt road surrounded by woods – but I know that a not-so-little piece of me 
will be lost the day he does.”

                      (This paints an evocative picture, Matt. And so great about your Dad. – jga)

I first encountered Matt’s work via the Poetry Friday crowd.

I anticipate Matt’s poems & stories to appear in many forthcoming picture  books. In fact,
his second picture book, which he co-authors, is due out in April.

Go visit him here.

FRED KOEHLER

“When I was a kid, our house backed up to an acre or two of Florida scrub. 

Through the woods, I had neighbors whose dad worked construction and 

brought home all the scraps of job site lumber. In those trees, we would build 

the most elaborate fort systems, with tight ropes lines between the trees, trap doors, 

and even underground bunkers. We had more fun than any other kids on the planet, 

and probably could fend off pirates better than the Swiss Family Robinson.”

             (I see the foundations of an artist’s mind in those constructions, Fred.

                                                      Thank you! – jga)

I first encountered Fred's talented work in the hilarious, minimalist-word story by 

poet Rebecca Kai Dotlich,  ONE DAY, THE END.  

This year I anticipate Fred’s Pacific garbage patch-set debut novel.

lVisit his site & online gallery.

Also, travel along as KidLitTV reveals, via a talk with Rocco Staino, 

how Fred helped develop this book’s evocative nightscape.

I ordered FLASHLIGHT NIGHT from my local indy, Midtown Reader.

My child days hideout memories include a tree seat my father nailed into one of our beautiful,

old dogwood trees, so I could read up there, undisturbed & also, the creek ravine woods that 

beckoned me not far from that tree. Earlier, at our first house, I loved the fresh-scented,

old pine fairy woods. It rose up dark green on damp dirt on the side of our house that was 

opposite from the neighbor's aromatic dairy farm. 

Readers of the Group Blog: good luck with all your rhymes, especially the picture book kind. - JG Annino

Meet Joanne Fritz, from bookselling to book making

    

Meet Joanne R. Fritz

by J.G. Annino

For a decade, Joanne Fritz cuddled at home

with the best children's books in the form of

advance reader copies (ARCs), before the

real deal ever popped into reader hands.

And she met the best children's authors in the

bookstore where she hand-sold their books.

She also read the best children's magazines,

such as those from the Highlights family of

publications.

Now, she is refining her writing for children, with

help from the best author-teachers we love to

read & study.

What were the best things about being a children’s bookseller?

Besides meeting all those amazing authors, I loved finding the right book for a child.                                                                                      

If the parent told me a few things about their kid and what they liked to read (or didn’t like to read!), 
I could always make several suggestions for books they would love. Parents and grandparents, 
as well as librarians, learned to look for my Staff Pick shelves or seek me out to ask for further recommendations.

By the time I left I had quite a few loyal customers who only wanted to deal with me, especially at the holidays.

Another favorite part of my job was recommending books for Indiebound. They used my blurb for 
Padma Venkatraman’s first novel (back when Indiebound was still called Booksense), hence it was 
fantastic to finally meet her at the Highlights Foundation workshop on Novels in Verse in 2016.

I also wrote children’s book reviews for a local newspaper that was distributed to all the area schools.

Now I review books on my blog, My Brain on Books.   

What were 5-8 titles, off the top of your head, that were guaranteed sellers in 

picture books, middle grade & YA?

It’s been a few years, so this may already seem outdated, but in PBs, Olivia was always popular, 
and any funny books about animals, really. The Pigeon books, Richard Scarry books, etc. 
Anything about trucks sold well, like Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site.  
We also sold a lot of classics like Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, and
 Caldecott winners too because they made nice gifts.

In MG, after Harry Potter died down, we sold anything by Rick Riordan and really anything in a series, 
but we also had plenty of customers buying stand-alone Newbery books and whatever our current 
Staff Picks were. And in YA, Hunger Games, Twilight, and similar books sold well back then, but so 
did YA contemporary, like anything by Sarah Dessen or Ellen Hopkins. Now, I think contemporary rules, 
but there will always be fans of fantasy and paranormal.

What are your favorite kinds of children's books? What did you read as a kid?

As a kid, I absolutely loved The Secret Garden, James and the Giant Peach, and Charlotte’s Web.

But I would read anything then, even comic books.

Reading was by far my favorite thing to do, besides climbing trees.

My favorite books remain MG, though now I lean more toward historical fiction and contemporary 
than fantasy, but I do try to read adult fiction occasionally (my favorite read in 2015 was 
All The Light We Cannot See). 
In general, I’m not big on nonfiction (I know I should read more).

Just give me a good story and I’m happy.

Did you write as a kid?

Yes, I did, starting at about the age of eight.

But for a long time I thought of it as a secret I needed to keep.

I didn’t tell my family or friends.

For many years after, I wrote secret stories and poems but never tried to write
a picture book until the birth of my first son.

I also didn’t write on a regular basis back then, only when I felt inspired.

I didn’t start writing novels until 2007, so I’m relatively new at that.

How did the shop prepare for author appearances?

It was a team effort.

The manager took care of ordering books for the signing, basing it on how many 
people we expected to attend. We advertised in the local paper, and more recently, online. 
The day of the signing, we’d set up chairs, a podium, and test the microphone a few hours in advance.

For the children’s authors, I frequently introduced the author myself.

The first time I had to do that I was extremely nervous, but everyone told me I did a great job.

From then on it was fairly easy. I still got nervous and weak-kneed, getting up in front of 50 or 
100 people and talking into the microphone, but I managed.

I also moderated Q&A sessions after the author’s speech, and helped keep the signing 
line moving along smoothly. After a signing, we usually asked the authors to sign stock for our shelves, 
so I got extra chances to talk to them.

Over the years, I was privileged enough to meet many distinguished children’s book authors, 
including but not limited to, Laurie Halse Anderson, Patricia MacLachlan, Richard Peck, 
T.A. Barron, Dan Gutman, Jerry Spinelli, Ellen Hopkins, Beth Kephart, A.S. King, and 
K.M. Walton (whose launch party for CRACKED was by far the biggest of any we had for a YA debut author.)

You undoubtedly have a deserved advantage in becoming a children's writer & author, due

to your bookshop background. Perhaps it's from seeing so many titles. 

Perhaps from meeting children's authors in the shop? And from hearing what young

readers in the shop, said? 

There were many advantages to working in a large children’s book department.

Probably the biggest advantage was having access to so many ARCs.

Since I was able to read (for free) as many current books as I could, I learned a lot about 
writing from that

(and I think any aspiring author should read as much as possible in their genre – if you don’t 
have access to ARCs, go to your local library!)

Restocking shelves helped me learn what books were flying off the shelves and what weren’t, 
so I learned what books were successful, at least in our area. I’m sure every bookstore is different.

As a bookseller, I devised a pitch for each book.

So when my customers asked for a recommendation I could pull out a few books and 
describe each one in an enticing way.

It’s a bit like hooking an agent or editor with the first few lines of your query.

Meeting authors is always wonderful, and some of them I’m proud to call friends now, 
but it really didn’t give me any advantages as a writer. Talking to my young customers h
elped me realize what they look for in a book (as opposed to what their parents look for). 
My customers were diverse and their tastes varied widely.

What one young reader liked, another wouldn’t.  

But they all knew a good cover can make a potential reader pick up a book, but if the first page 
doesn’t deliver, they’ll put it down again.

More about Joanne R. Fritz

Before you leave a note/comment for Joanne here, read some more about her:

A lifelong avid reader, Joanne majored in English at Dickinson College, intending to work in publishing. 
She spent a couple of years as an editorial assistant in New York City, before moving back to Pennsylvania 
and working first in a greeting card company and then in a school library. 
After a stint as a stay-at-home mom, Joanne re-entered the work force as a children’s bookseller in 2002 at Chester County Book & Music Company, in West Chester, PA. At one time, it was one of the largest independent bookstores in the country. It opened in 1982. The bookstore no longer exists, unfortunately, but there are still several indie bookstores within a reasonable driving distance of Joanne's home.  When the bookstore closed, she began writing full time. 

You can meet up with her at MY BRAIN ON BOOKS, her book review blog. 

  "Storm Magic," (above) a rebus by Joanne R. Fritz, was published in the October 2016 issue of Highlights.