Ten-Minute Blog Break - 29th September

Logo by Melany Pietersen

Nothing seems to be clear-cut in the world of writing or illustration, and perhaps that grey area is what makes the creative arts so fascinating. As quickly as one person sets out a list of rules, another person breaks them. So who's right and who's wrong? Often, it's both and neither!

Over at Picture Book Den, Natascha Biebow takes on the perennially thorny subject of illustration notes in picture book manuscripts. Should you include them? Natascha says no, but just take a look at the comments section...

It was Clare Helen Welsh's book birthday yesterday, and there's been a flurry of blogging to celebrate the occasion. Christina Banach interviews Clare to uncover the surprising story behind the naming of Aerodynamics of Biscuits. Meanwhile, on Clare's own blog, she posts all about her latest school workshop, which involved an unusual amount of balloons!

It's always interesting to see publishers spotting a gap in the market, so I enjoyed Catherine Friess's post about Maverick Publishing's early reader series. Maverick have taken five of their picture books (including titles by SCBWI members Alex English and Alice Hemming) and made them into books suitable for Key Stage One literacy.

Not content with being in last week's Blog Break, Sarah Towle delivers another thought-provoking blog post about the boundaries between historical fact and fiction, and how to navigate them to deliver the most engaging story.

Finally, I freely admit to being biased about school libraries, because my wife is a primary school librarian. But I also can't imagine that there's anyone reading this who thinks that school libraries are a bad idea! So with that knowledge, enjoy Nicola Morgan's "thought experiment" about the relative importance of public and school libraries.

Nick.

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Nick Cross is an Undiscovered Voices winner and has recently received the SCBWI Magazine Merit Award, for his short story The Last Typewriter.

Click here to read Nick's latest blog post for Notes from the Slushpile. His children's short story The Drowners can be found in issue 9 of Stew Magazine.