Alyza Liu is an editor at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers who loves a good picture book biography and shares many great examples in her session. She walks us through the spreads of CAN YOU IMAGINE? (out early 2025!!), the forthcoming Yoko Ono picturebook biography by Lisa Tolin and Yas Imamura.
When creating engaging and relatable picture book biographies it is of the utmost importance to respect young readers' preferences—they do not want to read treacly, stodgy, preachy life lessons—they want connections to their subjects and it's the author's job to find those themes and emotions that resonate. Alyza outlines for attendees why this is important, and provides a list of questions to ask oneself when writing a biography as well as a list of what she looks for when acquiring one.
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| Alyza sharing what sorts of elements make a good picturebook biography |
Crafting a compelling narrative that can fit and work within the format and age range of picture books is the key to successful biographies for kids. As a test case: Alyza introduced us to Yoko Ono's life and art through Lisa and Yas's book page spreads. We saw how the book remained age appropriate even when covering violent or triggering topics. And how, as a book for young children, the strongest themes running through it needed to be able to emphasize the positive, which it did: Yoko's imagination, creativity, and commitment to peace all serve as beacons of hope to young readers.
On the topic of working and fitting within the picture book format, Alyza mentioned repeatedly how great Debbie Ohi's resources are for working out book dummies and pagination (Debbie is basically the most wonderful everything, everyone at SCBWI Team Blog agrees).
Other great, example titles mentioned by Alyza:
THE GREAT STINK by Colleen Paeff and Nancy Carpenter
and
I DISSENT by Debbie Levy and Elizabeth Baddeley
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