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Writing a Picture Book with Stephen Krensky (Online)

Writing a picture book is a distinct partnership between art and craft.

The art comes, as with all stories, with inventing an appealing character, a strong plot, a compelling theme, and an inviting setting. But craft is involved as well – and not just the usual craft of editing the story. That matters, of course, but in writing a picture book, a writer must be also aware of the very specific format that picture books inhabit. Almost all of them are thirty-two pages, for example (counting the title page, etc.) and, unlike a novel, the turning of the pages themselves is part of telling the story. Then, too, the interaction between words and pictures is its own kind of dance. So, there’s a lot to think about when making a picture book realize its full potential.

STEPHEN KRENSKY is the author of more than 160 fiction and nonfiction books for children, including about two dozen picture books. Among them are How Santa Got His Job, which was an American Library Association Notable Book and Hanukkah at Valley Forge, which received the Sydney Taylor Gold Medal for picture books from the Association of Jewish Libraries. Stephen and his wife Joan live in Lexington, Massachusetts, and he happily spends as much time as possible with his grown children and not-so-grown grandchildren. For more information on Stephen and his books, please visit his website at https://www.stephenkrensky.com/

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