How to Revise a Picture Book (Part 1)
As one of my many explorations during my MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, I wrote about how to revise picture-book manuscripts. Now, that writing has become a two-part article in the CANSCAIP News!
For the article, I visited my local archive—the Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books in Toronto—to seek original manuscripts that became acclaimed picture books. I then analyzed how three authors revised their manuscripts. This included Kathy Stinson’s Red is Best (illustrated by Robin Baird Lewis, published by Annick Press), Linda Granfield’s The Road to Afghanistan (illustrated by Brian Deines, published by Scholastic Canada), and Paulette Bourgeois’s Franklin in the Dark (illustrated by Brenda Clark, published by Kids Can Press).
Many thanks to the Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators and Performers for publishing the article, and to Kathy Stinson, Linda Granfield, and Paulette Bourgeois for permission to quote from their archived material.
You can read the first part of the article here (in the Summer 2019 issue). This part discusses beginnings and endings. The second part will explore how to revise the messy middle of a manuscript.
