Writing Children's Books For Dummies. Peter Economy

well. Get the flavor of current YA mysteries by checking out some newer titles. One of Us Is Next by Karen M. McManus (Delacorte Press), is a truth-or-dare mystery that keeps alive the memory of a teen who died the previous year and puts its players in peril. In All Your Twisted Secrets, by Diana Urban (HarperTeen), six teens are locked in a room with a bomb, a syringe filled with poison, and a note saying they have an hour to pick someone to kill — or they all die.

Writing About Real People

      You probably already know that people love to read stories about real people. Whether they dive into a riveting biography about someone who faced tremendous odds and beat them, or a story of first love, or the joy of having a best friend (whether imaginary or real), books about real people are evergreen, always popular. They are similar to true stories and historical nonfiction. The following sections walk you through some of the major categories within this genre.

      Biography/memoir

      Although many people traditionally categorize memoirs as subsets of autobiography and biography, memoirs are actually different in form, presenting a more narrowed focus. Although a biography or autobiography covers the story of a particular life, a memoir tells the story of a specific event or series of events highlighted as memorable moments in the author’s life.

The authors of biographies, such as the titles shown in Figure 3-6, write in the third person and do a lot of research. You can use a very literary style with biographies of historical, cultural, and scientific figures, past and present; whereas biographies of current hipsters and celebrities (both movie/TV stars and sports heroes) tend to read like Teen People magazine. And both types of biography have their readership. Biographies are generally written as picture books, middle-grade books, and YA — even graphic novels.

      a) From Sing and Shout : The Mighty Voice of Paul Robeson reprinted by permission of the author. © 2020 Susan Goldman Rubin. The cover of Sing and Shout is courtesy of Calkins Creek, an imprint of Astra Books for Young Readers. b) From book covers/jackets published by Abrams Books. Used by permission of Harry N. Abrams, New York. All rights reserved. The Eye That Never Sleeps: How Detective Pinkerton Saved President Lincoln text © 2018 Marissa Moss. Illustrations © 2018 Jeremy Holmes.

      FIGURE 3-6: Example biographies.

      Great new literary picture book biographies include The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read, by Rita Lorraine Hubbard, illustrated by Oge Mora (Anne Schwartz Books) and Drawing on Walls, by Mike Burgess, illustrated by Josh Cochran (Enchanted Lion Books), about Keith Haring.

      For middle-graders, check out biographies and memoirs such as The Missing: The True Story of My Family in World War II, by Michael Rosen (Candlewick); and The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, by Sandy Tolan (Bloomsbury USA). And for the YA audience, Redbone: The True Story of a Native American Rock Band, by Christian Staebler and Sonia Paoloni, illustrated by Thibault Balahy (IDW Publishing); and Beauty Mark: A Verse Novel of Marilyn Monroe, by Carole Boston Weatherford (Candlewick).

      

The best biographies always reveal the most about the central figure’s character and include enough details and tidbits about the character’s personal life to make the reader feel like they’re getting a realistic and comprehensive look at another person’s life.

      Memoirs are books of nonfiction narrative that are about a person’s life and personal experiences. The author is the main character of a memoir, so the reader assumes the content is factual.

      Although most writers are adults, not all memoirs are for adults. Many adults write memoirs for middle-graders and especially young adults. The prolific writer Nikki Grimes’ Ordinary Hazards: A Memoir (Wordsong) recalls a fraught childhood transformed by writing. Stupid Black Girl: Essays from an American African, by Aisha Redux (Street Noise Books), is “an important and eye-opening contribution to conversations about global identity politics,” according to Kirkus Review, a reviewing body that we discuss in Chapter 20.

      LGBTQIA

      LGBTQIA is an inclusive term that describes a range of sexual orientations and gender identities. It might be the reader who identifies as LGBTQIA or it might be a reader’s friend or parent or neighbor who identifies as LGBTQIA. Books in this genre help all readers better understand what living these experiences is like.

The Stonewall Riots: Coming Out in the Streets, featured in Figure 3-7, is an example of historical nonfiction about being gay in the 1960s and coming out and protesting the social stigma that existed then toward gay people.

      From book covers/jackets published by Abrams Books. Used by permission of Harry N. Abrams, New York. All rights reserved. The Stonewall Riots text © 2019 Gayle E. Pitman.

      FIGURE 3-7: The Stonewall Riots: Coming Out in the Streets.

Today, children of all ages might identify as or come out as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB), or they may have family or friends who do. They also need to understand other categories of gender fluidity:

       Transgender: Transgender is the term for someone who identifies as a different gender than the gender they were assigned on their birth certificate.

       Queer: Can have various meanings but inclusively offers a unique celebration of not conforming to social norms (see Figure 3-8). Includes people who identify as non-binary, neither male nor female, using the pronouns they and them instead of she/her or he/him.

       Intersex: Individuals who don’t fit into gender norms of boy or girl, or for those whose reproductive anatomy isn’t typical

       Asexual: People who don’t have an attraction to either sex or who don’t feel typical romantic attachment.

      

If you aren’t familiar with the LGBTQIA dynamics, all this new, possibly strange-seeming info can be a lot to digest! And some people don’t understand how children can be so sure of their gender associations when they’re still in their developmental stages. Possibly, children just don’t know how they want to identify yet. And they may have family, friends, teachers, or classmates who fall into one of these non-binary categories, so they want to understand. For these reasons, you increasingly find these categories in picture books, middle-grade, and YA novels.

Some standouts in the picture book category include Auntie Uncle: Drag Queen Hero, by Ellie Royce, illustrated by Hannah Chambers (POW Kids); and the hilariously titled The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish, by Lil Miss Hot Mess, illustrated by Olga de Dios (Running Press), which takes as its inspiration the song “The Wheels on the Bus.”

      Middle-grade entries include The Mighty Heart of Sunny St. James, by Ashley Herring Blake (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers), about a 12-year-old who thinks her perfect new best friend might be someone she wants to kiss; and The Witch Boy, by Molly Ostertag (Graphix), about rigid gender