Mining the wealth of information from SCBWI's Regions

Whether it's your local region or one across the country, or even across the globe, there's so much wonderful information to be accessed from the blogs, websites and newsletters of SCBWI's many regional chapters!  


Take this on-line article, "What Makes A Caldecott," by illustrator member Melanie Hope Greenberg - a recap of the talk Brooklyn Public Library's Central Librarian Judy Zuckerman, a 2005 Caldecott Committee member, gave to SCBWI Metro New York.  

Zuckerman spoke about the criteria for the award, and analyzed two Caldecott winning picture books (Kevin Henkes’ Kitten’s First Full Moon (2005 winner, which Zuckerman helped select) and David Wiesner’s The Three Pigs (2002 winner).  Even though an illustrator might not have been able to attend this event, Melanie's article offers lots of thought-provoking moments and inspiration, with Zuckerman's concluding excellent advice:

A great way to polish up the craft of picture book illustration, she said, was to see what comprises “the cut above the rest.” And those are the Caldecott winners.

From SCBWI Western Washington, this blog post by Laurie Thompson on the highlights from their region's recent Non Fiction Intensive with Andrew Karre from Lerner/Carolrhoda was wonderful. The post includes gems from the day, including:

Ask yourself, would it still be a good book if it was fiction? It shouldn’t matter where it ends up getting shelved—a good story is a good story.

There's a great discussion of voice in illustration in this blog post article "A Question of Voice" telling us about the SCBWI British Isles Illustrator Masterclass Series event with Bridget Strevens-Marzo. Covering the different kinds of children's illustrators (are you a fox or a boar?  A painter or a writer?) and also linking on to resources like Scott McCloud’s pyramid of different ways to illustrate a character, moving between reality to abstract.  

And the article by April Halprin Wayland in the recent SCBWI Kite Tales Newsletter (the Newsletter of three chapters: Los Angeles, Orange County and Central California) that tells us all "How To Be A Poet In Three Easy Steps:"

1.  Wake up inspired and brilliant.
Wait, never mind -- you can skip this step and go directly to 2.

What's step number two?  You'll have to download the newsletter and read it for yourself. (pages 22-24) 

This is just a taste of how there's so much to discover from SCBWI's Regions - and not just your own! 


Here's a sampling of some international region logos:

And here are some fun ones from the USA:

Domestic and International, head over to scbwi.org's list of regions and start uncovering the bounty of information that's there for you!

Illustrate and Write On,

Lee