[Alice Novak Posts: 1 Status: Offline I love kids' books!]

Hello,

I am working on designing a summer program and curious if anyone has experience working with high school students to write and illustrate children's books for younger students?  Or are you familiar with any such endeavor.

Many thanks,

Alice Novak

[David Wright Posts: 961 Status: Offline Tell me that again.]

My nephew just had a picture book writing portion in his creative writing class in grade 12. It didn't have much depth--they didn't even cover the rule of three. And he just used public domain pictures for the art.

Are you targeting one grade more than the others?

[Debbie Vilardi Posts: 6,937 Status: Offline Language is so cool! WWW]

I've seen this done. The kids write and illustrate (using photos, a toon program, or their own drawings), and then read to the students. They may use spiral binding.

My kids actually made books in elementary school. They were bound books with blank pages. The kids figured out the story and made dummies before writing the text and drawing their own art. My daughter did one on dinosaurs with a fact per page.   They set on the book shelf next to my books, alphabetized by last name like in a real library.

[Jenny Posts: 84 Status: Offline WWW]

I’ve seen this done too, but only in a pretty basic format. It would be lovely if you could do a program that was more in depth. One that really digs into what a picture book truly is. I wonder if you might be able to get some authors or illustrators as guest speakers during the project.

[Tori Posts: 688 Status: Offline Don't we all wish we could get the last word? WWW]

I taught a picture book unit to seventh graders, using ideas for form and structure from picture book authors like Tammi Sauer and editors like Cheryl Klein that I found online. (This was before I was published, myself) The kids planned their stories using  a single sentence (thanks to David Mamet), "Who wants what and why? Why now? What happens if her (sic) don't (sic) get it?" They created dummies (Debbie Ohi has a great template online) using clip art and the finished books were read to a partnered second grade class. At the beginning of the unit, I read them some classic picture books and we discussed the character arc and emotional resonance.
You'll have fun!
Aloha,
Tori