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

Can't make it to the In-Person Winter Conference in New York City, join us online at the Virtual Winter Conference featuring inspirational talks, industry panels and deep-dive Creative Labs, taking place in February of 2026. Videos of all sessions are available to watch for approximately 30 days after the event.

Tell Children the Truth: Writing Nonfiction Through a Social Justice Lens with Traci Todd

Traci N. Todd is the award-winning author of Nina: A Story of Nina Simone (a 2022 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honoree and 2022 NCTE Orbis Pictus Award Winner); Holding Her Own: The Exceptional Life of Jackie Ormes (a 2023 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honoree, 2023 Sibert Honoree, and Bank Street College Best Children's Book, Outstanding Merit); and Make a Pretty Sound: A Story of Ella Jenkins (a Junior Library Guild gold standard selection). She is also the compiler of the anthology, This Is Not a Small Voice: Poems by Black Poets

Traci has been an editor for over 20 years and has shepherded many successful books for children, including the New York Times-bestselling The ABCs of Black History. She believes the truth is powerful.

It’s our last day! It’s a wintry, rainy morning in NY and everyone’s gearing up to say their goodbyes. Awards have been announced, and we’re at our last day of workshops. Let’s work. 

Traci starts with an introduction of her work. She has been involved in the creation of so many works of literature as both an editor and a writer. She made the transition around 2021.

We are living through heavy times, says Traci. Let’s start with a little light. 

She plays this video, where the cutest kid on the planet gives us a pep talk:

Here's a mantra: what will be your Space Jam? 

Here's our agenda:

            -Talk about history, oppression, and writing truth

            -Listen to black women

What is social justice? 

Social justice is all power to the people: a movement/practice toward people where everyone as fair access to people

(see more at the Learning for Justice/Southern Poverty Law Center)

When we talk about oppression, we think about one kind. But it’s important to think about the intersections. The various ways in which we see the world. No one’s better to speak to this than Audre Lorde

Audre’s voice echoed in our room as Traci played audio from 1983 from Ms. Lorde and she spoke on the intersection of oppression and the overlap and ties between people of marginalized communities.

‘Within the lesbian community I am black and within the black community I am lesbian’

‘There is no hierarchy of oppression’

We want the world to be more equitable and just. A natural question is, 'Can’t I just write about kindness?’ Kindness is good but it is not enough

From the @littlejusticeleaders IG account:

Teaching ‘kindness’ without talking about power: kindness is great but if we don’t talk about fairness, history, and power, we’re only telling half the story.

Writing about these topics is hard. It feels hard. Traci has been on panels of primarily white authors who write about Black figures. More often than not, they leave out the racism because it’s ‘too heavy’ for children. It’s not easy for them to deal with. But, the majority of children have to deal with this in their lives, regardless.

Leaving out the reality of racism leads people to think it doesn’t exist today. This is why Traci talks about race, men, government…power. You have to address these things to change things. 

Silence is more dangerous than truth. The truth feels dangerous, but silence is more dangerous.

In Traci’s book Nina: A Story of Nina Simone, Traci includes the fact that Nina's friends (Lorraine Hansberry and James Baldwin) ask her to join the movement. Nina says she’s too famous and tired to join the movement. She wasn’t immediately on board. Traci intentionally illustrates that Nina Simone wasn’t always this full person we all knew. 

”Complicate your narrative to feel more human and to feel more true.”

Two questions that Traci asks when approaching research:

Who benefits from this version of the story?

And

Who/What is missing? 

Aka…

Where does the power lie? Write against it. 

One of the most insidious parts of white supremecist culture is the need to comfort. 

Children’s book writers naturally want comfort for kids and themselves. This is why the people in the panel mentioned above wrote the way they wrote. 

Hold space for multiple points of view. Who benefits? Who’s missing? Have multiple points of view. Everything deserves visiting and revisiting. 

Let’s talk non-fiction, specifically. Per the Robert F Sibert Informational, non-fiction is....

-well researched, documentable information

-information text/books

*informational books are defined as those written and illustrated to present, organize and interpret documentable, factual material. 

i.e. you have to interpret and have a point of view. Otherwise, you’re a journalist. 

Fact

-documentable, verifiable, objective? The who what where when

Truth

-critical, requires context/prior knowledge and curiosity, poetic-meaning underneath, the why

Example: Segregation Consider this statement:

"Black and white people were not allowed to sit together"

        What’s not truthful here? The group discussed what was wrong with this statements and how it could be improved. They landed here: the power is removed from this statement. 

"There were laws that said black and white people could not sit together"

        Still not there

"White people passed laws to separate themselves"

        Still not, but on the right track

"White people separated themselves from black people"

        This is the most apt of these four 

Research

-Primary sources are ideal: find something written BY the person you’re writing about. They’re unfiltered, unadulterated.

-The library is your friend

-Think critically: ask the two questions we noted above over and over again

-Be open to where your research takes you  

Research sites:

jstor.org if you sign up you can read online 100 articles a month for free. Paid, you can download unlimited archive. Has museum pieces, textiles etc 

archive.org  crowdsourced archive (be careful with copyright)

Thewayback machine (old blogs[?]) where things exist that don’t exist anymore

Can't make it to the In-Person Winter Conference in New York City, join us online at the Virtual Winter Conference featuring inspirational talks, industry panels and deep-dive Creative Labs, taking place in February of 2026. Videos of all sessions are available to watch for approximately 30 days after the event.