Every Writer Should Write Memoirs. News Flash: The Donkey’s Song stemmed from my memoir writing. That Donkey is me! Yesterday, I asked my Memoir Mondays people to draw a map of their childhood neighborhoods. If you study my map closely, you can see that my childhood home was within walking distance of the foundation blocks of…
Category: Jacki Kellum Picture Books
What Do Amazon Best Seller Ratings Mean? – Understanding the Business Side of Making a Picture Book
For the past several days, my debut picture book The Donkey’s Song has been at the top of one of Amazon’s Best Seller Lists. I have wanted to post something about Amazon’s ratings for a while, and I decided that this might be a good time to tell you what I know about this Amazon…
What IS the 28 Day Picture Book Challenge? #PBChallenge
It’s Official! My Debut Picture Book The Donkey’s Song Has a Birth Day Soon. After stretching and yawning and rolling around for years, my Donkey will finally be born on October 11, 2022. And even though it has not even been printed yet, The Donkey’s Song has climbed to the top of one of Amazon’s…
The Donkey’s Song Is A Picture Book about the Dark versus the Light
I have been busy getting my curriculum ready for the class that I’ll be teaching this fall at my local college. Along the way, I decided to share some of that class online via social media, and I launched Looking at Lit, a free club for anyone who wants to learn more about literature. I…
Journeys in Literature
Tolkien may have been the greatest of the writers about journeys: In The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins and 13 Dwarves venture forward “on a quest to reclaim the Lonely Mountain from the dragon Smaug. Lord of the Rings – “The Quest of the Ring, also known as the Quest for Mount Doom, was the quest taken by…
The Whispering Rabbit by Margaret Wise Brown – Picture Book Daily
The Whispering Rabbit by Margaret Wise Brown Illustrated by Annie Won A Little Golden Book 543 Words 24 Page First Copyright of the Whispering Rabbit – 1948 Renewed by Penguin Random House – 1975 The Annie Won Version of the Book – 2017 Today, I am sharing a few tidbits about Margaret Wise Brown’s picture…
#14DayPBDay 11 – How to Write an Author’s Biography for A Picture Book Writer?
I’ve only been in the business of writing children’s books for a couple of years and yet, I couldn’t even venture a guess as to how many times I’ve been asked to supply a biography for myself. Doesn’t it make sense to get one good biography ready and store it somewhere safe? Better still–email your…
14-Day Picture Book Challenge Day 3 – Picture Writing and Word Painting – How to Write Descriptively
Day 3 Challenge – 14 Day Picture Book Challenge – Part A: Read Jane Yolen’s description of the setting in her book Owl Moon and after you have reduced the words significantly, rewrite it — without losing the power of the initial words. Part B: Rewrite the Setting of Your Picture Book. In another post,…
14-Day Picture Book Challenge Day 2 – Describe the Setting of Your Picture Book
For the second day of the 14-Day Picture Book Challenge, your assignment is to describe the setting of the picture book that you will be writing. You don’t need to write in beautiful, poetic words yet. You don’t need to consider the voice or the format of your potential picture book. You don’t need to…
14-Day Picture Book Challenge Day 2 – Write a PB First Draft in A Stream of Consciousness – What is Writing in a Stream of Conciousness?
Write in Stream of Consciousness to Hush Your Self-Editor Something about writing seems to intimidate and/or frighten many people. Writing in a Stream of Consciousness can help get you past that hurdle of fear of writing. What Is Stream of Consciousness Writing? a person’s thoughts and conscious reactions to events, perceived as a continuous flow….