When I was asked to deliver not just myself but our presenter, Bonny Becker, to this workshop in a safe and timely fashion, I was a bit nervous. Spokane roadways are not my home turf. But armed with Google Maps and Bonny’s vote of confidence*, I was up for the challenge, right?
(*She may have just been
resigned to her fate.)
Okay, so my confidence wavered when
we took a slight detour through a business park, but with a right instead of a
left, success was ours. Almost. Bonny and I now faced the ultimate challenge of
our trip: the dreaded parking pay-n in the backside station. Luckily, we were in
good company. If it took more writers than we’d care to admit to unravel the
mysteries of the machine, that teamwork readied us for our next challenge: “The
Secrets of Writing a Great Picture Book.” Happily, that trip came with not just a map,
but a guided tour as well.
Our tour started with the seed of
all good books—the idea, the problem needing to be solved. Using several mentor
texts (including The Last Puppy by Frank Asch and her own A Visitor for Bear), Bonny
guided us through a series of questions that explored the core idea behind
each. Was the problem to be solved simple but profound? Was it approached in a
way that was fresh but familiar? Did it reflect an activity or emotion children
experience in their own lives? Was the main character(s) someone children could
relate to and cheer on? Bonny emphasized that these were the same questions we
needed to ask of our own story ideas.
The tour portion of the workshop
completed, we spent the rest of our day behind the wheel, putting our new
roadmap into practice. Again, we started with ideas, then took time to start
expanding one of our ideas into a story, and finished the day creating a book dummy
of that story. During each segment, participants had an opportunity to share
their work and Bonny’s guidance throughout was generous, informative, and
honest. Her feedback, and that of our peers, had some of us bogged in traffic,
needing to rethink our original idea. For others, it was the hazards farther
down the road that they needed to keep an eye on. We all, however, came away better
prepared to tackle those problems and road trip on to our own great picture
book. Thank you, Bonny.
Bonny's website can be found here: https://bonnybecker.com/
Bonny's website can be found here: https://bonnybecker.com/
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