Welcome to day 36 of 40 craft lessons. A book might have all the narrative elements and be enhanced by many literary techniques. It might read beautifully aloud, yet still feel hollow or detached. Something is missing—a sense of warmth, connection, or genuine emotion that moves the reader beyond simple entertainment. That’s what makes a

Welcome to day 35 of 40 craft lessons. Fear is the most common feeling among young readers: fear of darkness, being alone, new places, etc. Spooky picture books, with their playful unease and slightly eerie atmosphere, give young readers a safe way to explore a feeling that scares them. It’s like an experiment in a

Welcome to day 34 of 40 craft lessons. Reading mysteries not only entertains us but also trains our deductive reasoning. At a young age, this is especially useful. But the challenge is finding a mystery that isn’t too difficult for a young reader and fits within a 32- or 40-page picture book. Before, whenever I

Welcome to day 33 of 40 craft lessons. The fantasy genre is defined by magic or supernatural elements and forces. Dragons, unicorns, elves, and wizards have populated this genre so extensively that it might seem impossible to write a fresh fantasy story. Still, many magical creatures can carry our imaginations into a fantasy world. How

Welcome to day 32 of 40 craft lessons. Has it happened to you that you read about a person or an event and decided it is the perfect subject for a picture book biography? However, while writing, you face a big problem: a lack of resources. Since everything in a biography should be verifiable, we

Welcome to day 30 of 40 craft lessons. Biography is one of the most common genres in picture books, and its evolution is interesting to watch. If you look back at books published before 2015, you’ll often see long blocks of text paired with fairly simple illustrations. Between 2015 and 2020, things began to shift.

Welcome to day 31 of 40 craft lessons. Informational fictions, as the genre name says, are stories with the main purpose of conveying information and facts. One of the most frequently used literary devices in this kind of fiction is anthropomorphism. This literary device assigns human characteristics, emotions, and behaviors to nonhuman entities, such as

Welcome to day 29 of 40 craft lessons. Writing a picture book memoir isn’t for every writer—not every life has a story. But reading picture book memoirs benefits any writer, since it helps with one of the most difficult steps in writing picture books: deciding what to include and what to exclude. Studying memoirs also

Welcome to day 28 of 40 craft lessons. Making a good story by retelling a tale—or by being inspired by one—demands good craft. I exclude religious stories from this list because those stories have their readership secured through faith. They already have their customers. The challenge is to take a tale retold for generations and