A to Z: Works in progress that make third-graders laugh

Posted on April 27, 2016 by Julie Stroebel Barichello

Throughout April, I’m tackling 26 A to Z topics related to children’s literature. For W day, I had the chance to visit McKinley Elementary and talk about my works in progress, among other topics. Here’s a glimpse at what’s in the works from my pen.

Today I had the fantastic opportunity to speak to the third-grade classes at McKinley Elementary School in Ottawa. (The one in Illinois, not Canada. I’ve had to clarify that on Twitter more times than I can count.)

We had a stellar hour of honoring two winners in the Sarah & Katy essay contest, a Q&A session, and talking about my two-step formula to be a writer.

But the best part of the presentation, by far, was when we talked about my WIPs (works in progress). There are two books in the works right now — the first is “The Mountain of Dempsey Molehill,” which has a tentative release date of summer 2017, and the other doesn’t have a release date set.

During the presentation this afternoon, I talked about incidents that inspired both WIPs. “The Mountain of Dempsey Molehill” is all about the mischief of five siblings and the function of a semi-dysfunctional family. (If you can manage to imagine it, think The Addams Family mashed with Richard Peck’s “A Long Way From Chicago” — yup, it’s wacky.) The original inspiration for that work comes from a family story — which is practically family legend — about the time Uncle Fred decided to build an elephant trap.

Meanwhile, the inspiration for the other book (currently untitled) comes from my rowdy childhood bus route. From trying to tip the bus over to sneaking snow on the bus for a snowball fight, there’s a lot of inspiration to be found in childhood experiences and incidents.

The elephant trap anecdote sparked a lot of laughter from the McKinley third-grade crew, and the snowball fight story elicited both laughter and oh-man-they’re-in-trouble “ooooohs” from the crowd. They were a perfect test audience for the plots … and it was an ego boost when one student asked when and where she could buy the book with the elephant trap chapter.

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A to Z: Unplug your imagination

Posted on April 25, 2016 by Julie Stroebel Barichello

Throughout April, I’m tackling 26 A to Z topics related to children’s literature. It’s U Day, which means it’s time to address one of my favorite kid lit-related topics: unplugged imagination!

I am going to begin with a disclaimer: I think technology is great. I use it in some form all day, every day. Whether it’s texting my husband to ask him to pick up toilet paper, using my laptop to write, or ordering books online, technology makes life pretty darn good.

But technology is like cake. One slice is really good. Mmmmmm. Two slices are a real treat! Three slices can make you really full. But four slices?

Urrrrrgh. Talk about a belly ache.

Just like we limit how much cake we eat, it’s a good thing to limit how much time we spend glued to technology. Which is why one of the values promoted in the Sarah & Katy books is unplugged imagination.

What is unplugged imagination?

Unplugged imagination is the term I use to describe activity and play that doesn’t include batteries, chargers, cords, or plugs. Such activities could include:

  • Reading (*physical books, magazines, or newspapers — no e-readers)
  • Playing outdoors
  • Make-believe games
  • Crafts
  • Drawing or art projects
  • Writing a story

The benefit of unplugged imagination is that children exercise their imagination without using technology as a crutch. Instead of playing a video game, where the story is laid out and predetermined, children can create and act out their own stories in worlds they’ve created.

My nieces, Sarah and Katy (who inspired the Sarah & Katy series) are champs at the unplugged imagination. During one visit to my house, their imaginations seized upon a paperweight on my desk. It was a glass, diamond-shaped desk ornament, but to them it was the crown jewel in a museum. From there, their imaginations ran away with a full plot and cast of characters that became the subject of a previous blog post.

It’s OK to be inspired by technology. For example, one of Sarah and Katy’s favorite make-believe games to play with me is Escape From Bowser. Whenever the whole family is gathered at my parents’ country home, there’s a good chance we’ll end up in the backyard playing a game in which Sarah, Katy, and I are a blend of characters from the Mario Bros. games, Legend of Zelda, and Star Wars. Sometimes we’re Peach, Zelda, and Amidala. Other times we’re Daisy, Sheik, and Leia. The bad guy is always Bowser.

Even though the game borrows from movies and video games, the girls exercise their imaginations in creating their own plots and situations. A bonus: They’re outside running around. (Well, it’s a bonus for them … I’m usually huffing and puffing to keep up by the third or fourth time one of them screams, “Look out! Bowser!” and we go running to the other end of the yard.)

The same goes for older children who dabble in art or writing. Want to draw a picture of Link wielding his sword? Great! Want to write a Doctor Who fan fiction piece? Go for it! The point of unplugged imagination is to create and exercise creativity. Imagination is like a muscle — it needs a good workout a few times a week. The more it gets used, the more ideas and creative solutions a brain is able to make.

Unplugged imagination reading suggestions

I can be a bit of a broken record when it comes to my go-to list of reading recommendations, but here are a few books (including my own) that feature the unplugged imagination at work:

  • Sarah & Katy and the Imagination Blankets
  • Sarah & Katy and the Book of Blank
  • Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
  • The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Andrews Edwards
  • The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds
  • The Nowhere Box by Sam Zuppardi
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A to Z: 1,000 steps to child literacy

Posted on April 25, 2016 by Julie Stroebel Barichello

Throughout April, I’m tackling 26 A to Z topics related to children’s literature. Today is a catching up on the letter T with a look at the program 1000 Books Before Kindergarten. (Technically this could fall under O for One Thousand Books Before Kindergarten, but for the sake of fitting the letter and giving this awesome program some publicity, I’m going to slant the pronunciation to Thousand Books Before Kindergarten.)

Below are excerpts from a July 2015 blog post I previously wrote about this program.

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A child’s literacy development from birth through early elementary school can be a strong indicator of later life success, according to the 2012 study.

That’s why reading skills need to be developed long before children enter the classroom. That’s why literacy education needs to begin as soon as children exit the womb and enter the world.

1000BooksLogoThat’s why programs like 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten are awesome.

The program’s mission is to promote reading for newborns, infants, and toddlers, as well as promote bonding through reading.

I encountered 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten while researching an article about early childhood literacy for the local newspaper. The program is available nationally. Anyone can participate for free, with or without a local facility to sponsor.

The gist is this: Read 1,000 books to your child before kindergarten. From birth to the time school starts, just read a book from cover to cover. Repeats are allowed, so if your child wants to read “Are You My Mother?” 990 times and then 10 other books, you aren’t breaking any rules.

Reading one book a night is 365 in a year. In two years, that’s 730. Three years of daily reading would be 1,095, leaving you ahead of the game with two years to spare.

In June 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement promoting daily reading with children, beginning in infancy. The 1,000 Books program is a handy starting point and good incentive to keep parents on track.

1,000 Books Before Kindergarten offers all of the resources a family needs on its website: program instructions (available in English and Spanish), reading log sheets, printouts for milestones (reaching 100 books, 200, 500, etc.), and a reading list suggesting books for youngsters.

1,000 Books Before Kindergarten is beautifully simple and horribly underrepresented (its Facebook page has about 2,566 likes; on Twitter, fewer than 850 followers).

It’s worth playing the role of Scheherazade to the children in our lives. She told 1,001 stories in 1,001 nights to save her life; surely, we can read 1,000 stories in 1,826 nights to improve our children’s academic (and lifelong) success.

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A to Z: Standalones, sequels, and series – What’s coming next from my pen

Posted on April 23, 2016 by Julie Stroebel Barichello

Throughout April, I’m tackling 26 A to Z topics related to children’s literature. Today is a three-prong topic: Standalones, sequels, and series. Can you guess today’s letter? Huzzah for alliteration!

Breaking the news to my nieces, Sarah and Katy, that there wouldn’t be a third installment of the Sarah & Katy adventures in the foreseeable future wasn’t an easy task.

Mostly because I don’t think they believe me.

In 2014, I wrote “Sarah & Katy and the Imagination Blankets,” basing the titular characters on them. Initially, “Imagination Blankets” was going to be a standalone book. At my nieces’ urging, I wrote the companion book “Sarah & Katy and the Book of Blank.”

I hesitate to call “Book of Blank” a sequel. After all, it sort of picks up where “Imagination Blankets” left off, but it has a different style. Whereas “Book of Blank” is one consecutive adventure, start to finish, “Imagination Blankets” featured four different adventures in one book. And it doesn’t matter which book a reader picks up first. Both would make sense in either order, and both can stand by themselves.

Also, there really aren’t any crossover characters between the two books other than Sarah and Katy. And neither book acknowledges the adventures in the other one. Hence why I refer to it as the companion book.

I deliberately avoided setting myself up for a series with the Sarah & Katy books. I wasn’t ready to lock myself in to a long-term writing project (well, longer-term than writing a book already is) when I had other books in the back of my mind nagging to be written.

For the next few projects, I’m focusing on standalone middle grade novels, starting with my work-in-progress, “The Mountain of Dempsey Molehill.” There are more in store, though, including an early reader chapter book about a lie that keeps growing and growing, and a book inspired by my junior high bus route. (Did you know it’s possible to have a snowball fight on a school bus? It is, and that’s going to work its way into that book.)

(Meanwhile, Sarah, Katy, and their friends haven’t given up hope that future installments of the Sarah & Katy adventures will be forthcoming. But just in case, they have a contingency plan. They’ve started writing their own Sarah & Katy stories.)

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A to Z: Research as a children’s writer

Posted on April 22, 2016 by Julie Stroebel Barichello

Throughout April, I’m tackling 26 A to Z topics related to children’s literature. Technically Thursday was R day, and it’s after midnight on Friday as I write this. But it’s still Thursday to me since I haven’t gone to bed yet — so here’s a short and sweet R post about my favorite way to research children’s literature.

As I work on my upcoming middle grade novel, “The Mountain of Dempsey Molehill,” and outline a few other kid lit projects, I’ve found the need to conduct a lot of research.

But it’s not research for plots or characters. Instead, it’s research on writing styles, age-level vocabulary, page and/or word counts for different reading levels, and even layout issues such as how many illustrations and where they fall, font size for different reading levels, cover designs, and more.

As I dabble in writing for different age levels, ranging from early readers’ chapter books to junior high middle grade, I want to be sure my books are tailored to readers’ needs. To do that, I need to research industry standards.

And the way to conduct that research is pretty great. I do it by reading loads of kid lit.

I recently finished reading “Tripping Over the Lunch Lady and Other School Stories,” and during today’s library visit I picked up “The One and Only Ivan” and “The Graveyard Book.”

Even though it’s a shame to cut this blog post short, it’s been a long day and it’s late … and I’ve got some research to do.

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