 Waves Rolling Through the Rocks onto the Shore |
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SLUGS
Three more of his books will be published soon (including CROCS!, OCTOPI!, and ENCHANTED LIONS). Dutton Publishers will soon release Greenberg's first novel, A TUGGING STRING, that deals with Martin Luther King's Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March of 1965. His book THE GREAT SCHOOL LUNCH REBELLION is winner of a Children's Choice Award. David specializes in picture books and sub-specializes in poetry. His books have been translated into French and Korean. He has taught at Portland State University, Lewis & Clark College, and The University of Idaho, among others. He speaks nationally to teachers on writing instruction and visits many schools nationwide to present assemblies and writing workshops. If you wish to contact him personally, his e-mail address is authilus@teleport.com You can also get some useful sense of who he is at the Author's and Illustrators Who Visit Schools website.
Books: LISTENING FOR CRICKETS, Henry Holt, Spring '08
Cricket: Karla-Feather, The Visit, One Smart Horse
David Gifaldi's web address is www.davidgifaldi.com. You may contact him directly at djgifaldi@msn.com.
Esther's picture books include CHICKEN SOUP BY HEART (Simon & Schuster), winner of the Sydney Taylor Book Award for Younger Readers and FANCY THAT (Holiday House), a Junior Literary Guild selection and a Bank Street College Special Merit recipient.
"In this coziest and most comforting picture book, young Rudie saves his baby-sitter, the Chicken Soup Queen... Gouache, watercolor, and colored-pencil illustrations highlight the emotion in the warm colors, and special attention is paid to homey detail. Love and care radiate from the pages; this will surely inspire a lot of children to get into the kitchen so they can put stories in their own soup." Both Kirkus and Publishers Weekly starred FANCY THAT. 
"Told with engagingly rhythmic language and the repeating structure of a folktale, this tongue in-cheek piece of Americana will delight a wide range of readers and listeners." "In sonorous prose, Hershenhorn spins a historical story about a young "limner" (a traveling portrait painter)... Hershenhorn and Lloyd's collaboration is an unqualified success." Esther's middle grade novel THE CONFE$ION$ AND $ECRET$ OF HOWARD J. FINGERHUT (Holiday House) was a Crown Award Nominee and Bank Street College Best Book.
"No one will be able to resist its spirit." Esther often likens herself to the quest-driven Hero who returns home with something even better than what he first sought. In Esther's case, her years on task while out and about on her Writer's Plotline, seeking authorship and publication, dove-tailed perfectly with her previous classroom teaching experience and children's book creator advocacy. When not writing her own books, Esther now spends much of her time helping others learn to write their stories, teaching Writing for Children classes to adults as well as personally coaching children's book writers. Esther's Workshops at the University of Chicago's Writer's Studio focus on Writing the Novel — for both younger readers and young adults. Her workshops at Chicago's Newberry Library focus on writing picture books. Esther considers herself privileged to be privy to so many stories, diverse in format, genre, audience and authorship. Stories such as Cheryl Bardoe's THE FRIAR WHO WANTED TO GROW PEAS (Abrams), which took root in one of her Newberry Library workshops. Or client Laura Murray's about-to-be-published Putnam picture book THE GINGERBREAD MAN IS MISSING!. Or client Robert Aronson's recent Russian-published picture book THE TOWN NAMED MOUSE which celebrates the town of Myshkin and shares its profits with the town's orphanage.
Esther believes in Connecting. Indeed, she lives and breathes the Six-Degrees-of-Separation Philosophy: a person is only six people away from the person he needs to know! Serving on SCBWI's Board of Advisors and as the SCBWI Illinois Chapter's Regional Advisor, Esther works to connect children's book creators to both the Children's Book World and the growing, ever-changing writing and illustrating community. It's through her teaching and coaching, though, that Esther works especially hard to help each writer connect to his story.
SEALTH: THE STORY OF AN AMERICAN INDIAN
Mel didn't intend to write nonfiction when he started writing for children in 1969. But his first 12 fiction submissions to children's magazines received a total of 143 rejections with only one acceptance. So on a whim he decided to try writing nonfiction instead. That whim was an article about truck driving submitted to Highlights for Children in November 1970. "Truck Drivers Don't Play Around" was accepted by Highlights almost immediately. It was then Mel found out that 90% of submissions to most children's magazines were fiction — yet less than 10% of fiction submissions were accepted.
That was how Mel Boring found out that if you want to publish, nonfiction is definitely the (easier) way to go — the odds of publishing are about nine to one in your favor. With children's books, as well, in 1978, Mel learned that a similarly favorable market for nonfiction prevailed. Between 1978 and 1984, he published five books, only one of which was fiction. The confidence Mel gained from writing and publishing nonfiction instead of persisting in just fiction helped him through a dry spell of ten years with no books published. Then in 1996, North Word Press published three "Boring" nonfiction books. They were also included in two compilations FUN WITH NATURE (1999) and MORE FUN WITH NATURE (2002).
Mel also spent 18 years as an instructor with the Institute of Children's Literature, working with hundreds of students studying to write for children. So he understands, both by having written and having taught writing, the egads as well as the eurekas of writing and publishing for children. You may contact Mel directly at melb@rockisland.com. You may find out more about him at his website at http://www.authorsillustrators.com/boring/boring.htm
Now, with 20+ years of writing under his belt, Tom lives in Corvallis, Oregon, with his wife, Debbie. Their two daughters, Kelsey and Amy, are both off to college. When not writing or in classrooms talking with children and teachers about the writing process, Tom enjoys skiing, rock and mountain climbing, ski mountaineering, backpacking, mountain biking, kayaking, running, playing the string bass, and reading.
Tom's books include...
I'M GOING TO BE FAMOUS
AIRMAIL TO THE MOON
A KIDS GUIDE TO BUILDING FORTS Tom's website: www.tombirdseye.com
Harold enjoys teaching, and in that role wrote THE COMPLETE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO CHILDREN'S BOOK PUBLISHING, soon to be in its third edition. He founded and runs "The Purple Crayon," a respected web site with information about the children's publishing world at www.underdown.org. He speaks and gives workshops at conferences, including the SCBWI's national conferences in LA and NY, and smaller conferences all over the country. You may contact Harold personally at business@underdown.org. You can find out more about him at The Purple Crayon, at www.underdown.org
Stacy received her B.A. in Literary Studies from Middlebury College in Vermont. She loves books as things in and of themselves, but most of all,
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DAVID
GREENBERG author of illustrated, humorous picture books from Bantam and Little Brown & Co.:
In a Starred Review, Booklist wrote about CHICKEN SOUP BY HEART,
Kirkus wrote,
In her essay "Only Connect," P. L. Travers, the author of MARY POPPINS, suggested that in order to connect with his reader, the writer must connect first with his world at large, next with his immediate world, then finally with himself.
MEL BORING specializes in nonfiction. He is the author of:
He has published over 25 stories in such magazines as Highlights for Children and Cricket.
On the other (nonfiction) hand, only about 10% of submissions were nonfiction, so magazines went wanting for nonfiction articles. And ironically, 90% of what is published for children in toto is nonfiction. In the years following 1970, Mel sold 25 pieces to children's magazines, and about 90% of those were nonfiction.
With Leslie Dendy, Mel co-wrote GUINEA PIG SCIENTISTS: BOLD EXPERIMENTS IN SCIENCE AND MEDICINE (Henry Hold, 2005), Mel Boring's latest books was FLAMINGOS, LOONS, AND PELICANS (NorthWord Press, 2006).
Even after 18 books published and many awards won, at times it still amazes Tom that writing is his profession. It was such a difficult process for him when he was a kid; he can really identify with the reluctant writer in school today. Everything seemed to get in the way of his completing stories: from being left-handed, to his poor spelling skills, from punctuation woes, to especially a lack of ideas. Fortunately, the right people came along at the right time and helped him see past the hurdles, emphasizing instead the joy of the work and the satisfaction to be had in trying to uncover the important truths that can come out of fiction. Now he carries a small notebook at all times and is always on the lookout for material he can use in a story: ordinary people that would make good characters, the funny, telling, or poignant glimpses of life that are triggered by what he sees and hears, and the wonderfully wise things people will say at the most unexpected times.
True, he still labors through his stories, wrestling with the spelling beast and the punctuation monster, writing and rewriting, then rewriting some more, until he gleans his best. But the process has become one of pleasure instead of pain. He loves doing it, and loves sharing his writing process with others. The boy who couldn't imagine himself a writer, now can't imagine himself anything else.
Novels:
Picture Books:
Non fiction:
HAROLD UNDERDOWN is a freelance editorial consultant. He has worked at Macmillan, Orchard, and Charlesbridge, and has experience in trade and educational publishing. Among the books he has edited are Evelyn Coleman's and Daniel Minter's THE FOOTWARMER AND THE CROW, Yumi Heo's ONE AFTERNOON, Larry Pringle's and Bob Marstall's AN EXTRAORDINARY LIFE, Lisa Rowe Fraustino's ASH, Grace Lin's THE UGLY VEGETABLES, and Sneed Collards and Michael Rothman's THE FOREST IN THE CLOUDS. He is also the editor for the Young Patriots Series, published by Patria Press.
SUSAN COHEN has spent her entire 27 year career at Writers House. Most of her clients write and/or illustrate children's books, everything from nonfiction and picture books up through YA novels. Highlights of the past year were one author (Susan Patron) winning the Newbery Medal, and another (Tony Johnston) having a New York Times bestseller. She also represents a smaller number of adult nonfiction books. She has a B.A. in art history from Princeton and lives in New Jersey with her husband (a some-time writer) and 13 year old son.
