BLOG BREAK From Folk Tales to Fan Letters

Nick Cross presents his fortnightly selection of must-read blogs.

I'm always drawn to blog posts I can learn something from, so here's a terrific post from Chitra Soundar that's full of hard-earned wisdom. Chitra often adapts traditional folk tales for picture book stories, and it can be quite a tricky process.

I love drawing challenges. Not because I take part in any (I'm far too slow) but because I get to see lots of John Shelley's work! Following September's House of Illustration challenge, John took part in October's #Inktober, and you can see the beautiful work he produced on his blog.

If October was last month, then it must be time for NaNoWriMo! Rashmi Sirdeshpande is taking her first NaNo very seriously, as her comprehensive list of preparation steps demonstrates. I'm exhausted just reading it ;-)

I'm always totally spoilt for choice when I go to Elizabeth Dulemba's site – she blogs so often! But a couple of posts caught my eye, both about Elizabeth's illustrations for Adam Stemple and Jane Yolen's picture book Crow Not Crow. The first post covers the hanging of her illustration exhibition and the second recaps the talk she gave the following day.

It can take so long to write and/or draw a children's book, to the extent you can very easily forget why you started! Which is why I enjoyed Liz Flanagan's post about getting her first fan letter from a Dragon Daughter reader.

Nick

Feature image: Blog Break logo by Nick Cross

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Nick Cross is Words & Pictures' Blog Network Editor. An Undiscovered Voices winner, he both writes and illustrates for children, and was honours winner of the SCBWI Magazine Merit Award for fiction.

Nick also blogs for Notes from the Slushpile. His most recent blog post asks the question: Will Artificial Intelligence Replace Human Writers?.