Nonfiction Glow Up: Crafting Picture Books that Captivate Today’s Readers with Kate Messner

New York Times bestselling author Kate Messner is passionately curious and has written more than seventy books for kids who wonder, too. Her award-winning titles include picture books like Over and Under the Snow, Over and Under the Waves, and The Scariest Kitten in the World; novels like Breakout, Chirp, and The Trouble with Heroes; engaging nonfiction like the History Smashers series; the Ranger in Time historical adventures; and the Fergus and Zeke easy readers. A former TV news reporter, Kate also spent fifteen years teaching middle school English.  These days, she splits her time between Lake Champlain and Florida's Gulf Coast. Learn more at www.katemessner.com

Kate Messner has been talking with agents and editors and one thing's for certain: it’s tough time to sell nonfiction.

Nonfiction is facing a lot of challenges: over-acquiring over the past few years and book-banning in large-market states like Texas and Florida.

So, what’s in demand?

-strong narratives: voice and poetic language that will be a great read-aloud

-structures that increase readers’ delight: experimentation with structure

-photographic nonfiction

-accessible science, including math & physics

-everyday things: ie the airport book, color, food etc

-Humor* every single editor asked for funny nonfiction

-great storytelling: suspense, creating tension

-interactivity

-underrepresented voices 

What have editors seen enough of?

-picture book biographies(there’s a backlog)

-less history (more STEAM)

-didactic stories

-books written like articles (facts aren’t enough)

-detailed art notes (keep notes and references to provide later on, instead)

According to Librarians, what’s circulating?

-animals

-sports

-hunting and fishing

-farming

-crisp, stunning photography

-STEM - space, Dinos gaming robots

-cooking and food

-origami and drawing

Kate's activities for the group are called Glow Up Times. I'll be listing them here so you can do it at home. 

Glow up time - Create a list of ideas for potential books and, given the lists above, which ideas sparkle and which ideas need reimagining? 

Consider that what’s working now is different from 15 years ago. 

Use the Libby app:

Download and look at current picture books. If you live in NY state, you can have your NY public library card, Queens NY library card, and Buffalo. All can be accessed through Libby. What's it like in your state?

Advice: get as many library cards as you can on libby and read/look at all new non-fiction books.

Strong narratives can be many things. Sometimes it’s suspense, sometimes it's immersion into a world, sometimes it's poetry, it's gorgeous language. Ask yourself, is poetry the way in? If so, play up the poetry. Let it be poetic. It can also be humor. 

You have a topic and you have to ask yourself, what can I do with this? Can I make it funny? Immersive? Interactive? You’re adding reasons for people to pick it up.  

Glow Up Activity:

Make it more  (poetic, humorous, interactive)

Think about the strengths of your work. then think, what else might it be to make it more engaging?

The goal is to level it up. If it’s funny, make it more funny/silly.

The group then took an active manuscript and tried to make it more.

Structures that delight readers:

Scrapbooking like the book, My Antarctica

A tour through a museum like the book, Meet the Mini Mammals

Imagine sharing this book in a big group of kids. What would they shout out back at you?

Glow Up Activity:

Take a picture book project you love and think about structuring it a different way. Play around, mess around. It’s what lets you be weird

Could it be a contest? Could it be a tour? Could it have suspense?

Frequent happy failure. If you’re messing around with a lot of ideas, you’re going to find more that stick. Think about them like wildflower seeds. You shouldn’t care a lot for 3 seeds. You should scatter around a lot. Some will sprout and you can move in that direction. 

Ask, what bigger subject can you connect it to?

The Brilliant Deep disguises a biography within a larger issue.

The Story of the Saxophone sells better than the the tory of the person who invented the saxophone.

When a project isn’t working...

-Make it MORE. Give yourself notes

-expand the topic

-try a new structure

-experiment with point of view

-ask yourself should it be a middle grade book?

Write something new, keep a writers notebook for ideas. Scribble ideas down. 

An idea a day may lead to 100 scribbles in your notebook, which turns to 30 that have legs, which turn to 20 that don’t have obvious issues, which turn to 8 that may quite work, that are then 2 after the agents look through it and apply their vision. So keep going. 

Keep working on 'em, and play.

Kate provided some additional materials here: www.katemessner.com/scbwi26

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