The Bulletin is Now Online!

The 2020 Summer SCBWI Bulletin is the first all-digital edition of SCBWI's beloved magazine.

There's so much to explore behind Vashti Harrison's beautiful cover image, including:

An introduction to April Powers, SCBWI's new Chief Equity & Inclusion Officer

An article by Lisa Rogers that includes a helpful sidebar, "10 Tips for a Virtual Book Event"

An interview with Vashti Harrison about the cover,

An article by Linda Joy Kattwinkel, "Illustrators: Be Careful What You Post on Social Media"

and so much more!

To view The Bulletin, just log into your profile page at scbwi.orghttps://www.scbwi.org/ and click on PUBLICATIONS, then on The SCBWI Bulletin in the dropdown menu.

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

Listen to the Latest SCBWI Podcast: A Conversation with Yuyi Morales

Author/Illustrator Yuyi Morales has won the Caldecott Honor, The New York Times Best Illustrated Book, and Multiple Pura Belpré Awards. In this conversation with Theo Baker, Yuyi speaks of how children’s books became her companions and passion, offers insights into her creative process, and considers the impact joining SCBWI – and winning the Don Freeman Grant – had on her career.

Listen to the episode trailer here.

Current SCBWI members can listen to the full episode here (log in first).

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

Tomie dePaola Masterclass Released for Free

All of us in SCBWI and the children’s book community lost a dear friend and artist in Tomie dePaola. Anyone who has been lucky enough to dine or converse with him, or simply to be near his great big gregarious spirit, knows that he was the genuine article: a singular personality, and a master artist.

As we mourn his loss, we also want to celebrate his incredible body of work and his long and dear friendship with our organization. 

We are making available to members his entire Master Class DVD that he shot with Lin Oliver, where the two of them go in depth and discuss the modern picture book, a form he helped to invent and elevate. With outsized generosity, Tomie breaks down the history of the picture book, his approach, his working methods—everything you’d want to know about how he crafts a work of art for children. Tomie was incredibly proud of this Master Class. So please enjoy it, and pull a book or three of his off the shelf.

In a discussion with Lin Oliver, the master class is PACKED with insights, information, and inspiration.

Here's a quote from just the first minutes:

“If the words are more important than the pictures, that would be an illustrated storybook.... For me, the picturebook, once the child has had the book read to them, they can remember the story just by looking at the pictures.” —Tomie dePaola

Members can visit this page on the scbwi website to watch the class!

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

Children's Writers and Illustrators Who Also Work In the Industry

Featured last month in Publishers Weekly, this article by Pooja Makhijani, Children’s Writers Who Wear Multiple Hats, was a fascinating look into how for a number of notable creatives working in children's books, their day jobs are ALSO in children's books!

(And they have day-jobs, something we don't talk about a lot, but maybe we should.)

With shout outs and weigh-ins by Daniel Nayeri, Mallory Kass, Eric Smith, Andrea Davis Pinkney, John Cusick, Andrew Arnold, Grace Maccarone, Arthur Levine, Jonah Newman, and Patrice Caldwell, it's well-worth reading.

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

The Elephant in the Room: To Include COVID-19 In Your Contemporary Fiction or Not?

Over at the BookBaby Blog, in the post The Coronavirus: The Elephant in the Room, Steven Spatz asks:

"As a writer, what do you do if your book is set in the present, but the Coronavirus pandemic thwarts your story?"

With over 80 comments, there are a range of strategies, from adapting your work to include the pandemic, mentioning it in passing, ignoring it all-together by backdating or future-dating your story, and variations of all three.

If nothing else, it's good to know many other authors are thinking about how the current inflection points (of both the COVID-19 pandemic impact and Black Lives Matter being centered) will affect what they create.

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

Launching a Debut Picture Book in the Middle of a Pandemic - Claire Annette Noland Shares Her Experience On the SCBWI So Cal Kite Tales Blog

This post at the blog of the SCBWI Tri-Regions of Southern California, by Claire Annette Noland, about the launch of her debut picture book (illustrated by Alicia Teba and published by Cardinal Rules Press) is well worth reading!

The book, Evie's Field Day

"features a competitive girl set on winning her school’s field day events. The book’s release was scheduled to coincide with end-of-the-school-year activities. In March, when the pandemic caused us to shelter at home, we thought it would soon be over. Then reality set in. Schools, bookstores, and parks closed. Suddenly, my calendar was empty. But the book was being released and I wasn’t going to give up on my dream of it reaching children. It was time to make a new plan..."

Their solution was innovative, creating an “At Home Field Day” that children and their families could celebrate that tied into the book.

For all of us, it is definitely a moment to, as Claire puts it, "Call on Community," "Be Flexible," and "Step Out of Your Comfort Zone."

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

Community-Sourced Highlights of #SCBWISummerSpec

Hello community! What an amazing four days - and for everyone who registered, the recordings of every Conversation and Panel will be available for the entire month of August. (Amazingly, you can even register after-the-fact, and gain access to those recordings. More info on that here.)

And for everyone, here are a few of the most popular social media snapshots of the #SCBWISummerSpec:

Thank you, Sandra!

And a special shoutout to Susie Ghahremani's summing-it-up post:

Were there other take-aways and/or moments of resonance that you want to share? Feel free to do so in comments or on social media with the #SCBWISummerSpec hashtag.

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

Today is the Final Day of the #SCBWISummerSpec

So go check out the Official SCBWI Conference Blog, for live blogging from the virtual conference floor. And check out #SCBWISummerSpec on Twitter and beyond for community-sourced highlights!

And it's not too late to get the full conference experience - recordings of all the main conversations and panels will be available to watch the entire month of August 2020! Find out more here.

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee