Children’s Writing Web Journal

Bored?  Here’s something that will keep you busy — and help sharpen your writing, too.

It’s simple — pick your favorite classic fairy tale and rewrite it from the perspective of a minor or secondary  character.  How about the chariot’s driver in Cinderella?

Or try rewriting it from an off-the-wall perspective.  A medieval sheriff out investigating the disappearance of two area children.  One’s named Hansel.  The other’s Gretel.

Have some fun with this — and notice how it gets you thinking about things like perspective, point of view and voice.

If you like, post some of what you came up with in the comments.

Here’s a really nice collection of publishing terms that can help demystify things for the newer writers amongst you (and the not-so-new, too).    Internalize this and you can sling the lingo  with the best of ‘em.

(Hat tip to our pal Anastasia Suen for finding this one.)

Interested in writing stories and sending them to children’s book publishers? Come on over to The CBI Clubhouse for audios, videos, insider writing tips and much, much more!

Nominations for the third annual Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards (the Cybils) will be open Wednesday, October 1st through Wednesday, October 15th. The goal of the Cybils team (some 100 bloggers) is to highlight books that are high in both literary quality and kid appeal.

This year, awards will be given in nine categories (Easy Readers, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fiction Picture Books, Graphic Novels, Middle Grade Novels, Non-Fiction Middle Grade/Young Adult Books, Non-Fiction Picture Books, Poetry, Young Adult Novels). Anyone can nominate books in these categories (one nomination per person per category). Nominated titles must be published between January 1st and October 15th of this year, and the books must be in English (or bilingual, where one of the languages is English). To nominate titles, visit the Cybils blog (http://www.cybils.com/) between October 1st and 15th.

Between October 16th and January 1st, Cybils panelists (children’s and young adult bloggers) will winnow the nominations down to a 5-7 book short list for each category. A second set of panelists will then select the winning titles for the different categories. The winners will be announced on February 14th, 2009.

One of my great realizations from last weekend’s Kidlitosphere 2008 conference was that the future belongs to those who band together.  There’s simply too much clutter and background noise for individual authors to make a big splash on their own.  We need to collaborate.

Enter the group blog.

Writers, illustrators, agents, booksellers, librarians, readers — anyone with an interest in children’s literature — are working together to present multi-author blogs that are gathering plenty of attention.  These blogs work because they multiply the promotional power of having multiple authors, reduce the workload for each author and do better at attracting readers who are seeking a “big picture” approach about a particular topic.

You can group together with other bloggers to develop a group blog based around genre of books you write, where you live, where you went to school, common subject matter - or just about anything else.

Here are a few of the top group blogs in kidslit to get your creative juices flowing:

The Longstockings

Readergirlz

Class of 2k8

Disco Mermaids

Edge of the Forest

Guys LitWire

PS:  Wanna collaborate on a group blog?  We’re all ears.  Drop us an e-mail at mail@write4kids.com