This fall, editor Molly O'Neill (who will be on faculty at the upcoming SCBWI Winter Conference in New York City, February 1-3, 2013) published a blog post, "You Tell Me: The Home Library Dilemma," where she asked:
Imagine that your entire home library is destroyed (anguish! woe!) in a fire or flood or some such disaster. None of the books are recoverable. When it's time to start rebuilding your library: what are the very first two books (one picture book, one novel) that you'd want to put on your new shelves?
The answers (hers and in comments) are fun to read, but let's take the idea one step further...
How can we make our illustrations, our characters, and our stories so loved that they're the ones others would pick first in rebuilding their libraries?
What elements of our craft can we hone?
What depths of feeling and meaning can we spelunk?
What crazy and super-evocative words like spelunk can we use?
As we celebrate the holidays, let's also take the time to contemplate our work, and the concrete steps we can take in the year ahead to have that work reach its own and our greatest potential... And what better gift could there be, for ourselves and our readers?
Happy Holidays!
Illustrate and Write On,
Lee
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