Transforming True Events Into Picture Books
Jul 09, 2024
Online event
Nancy Churnin will share craft techniques that will show you how to make stories about true events compelling and emotion-filled.
In picture book biographies, authors build an emotional connection between their readers and main character. But in picture books about events, how do you build an emotional connection between your readers and history? Longtime SCBWI member Nancy Churnin shares craft techniques that help her segue from award-winning biographies to picture books that make events as compelling and emotional as narratives about people. In addition to her books about events, including National Jewish Book Award winner and Sydney Taylor Honor Dear Mr. Dickens (Albert Whitman, 2021) and The Rainbow Allies, the True Story of Kids Who Stood Against Hate, launching July 9 from Beaming Books on the day of this webinar, she will discuss mentor texts:
Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down by Andra Davis Pinkney, illustrated by Brian Pinkney (Little Brown Books for Young Readers, 2010)
The Pig War: How a Porcine Tragedy Taught England and America to Share by Emma Bland Smith, illustrated by Alison Jay (Calkins Creek, 2020)
Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Floyd Cooper (Carolrhoda Books, 2021)
Tuesday, July 9, 2024, Virtual Event
7pm-8:15pm EST
$30/$15 for premium members
**This event will be recorded, and a replay will be available for 30 days after the live event.
Learn more about your speaker
Nancy Churnin is an award-winning children’s book author who writes books about people who have made the world a better place and inspire children to be heroes, too. Her books have earned starred reviews and have been selected for Junior Library Guild, A Mighty Girl, Bank Street Best Books for Kids, Silver Eureka, National Council for the Social Studies Notable and multiple state reading lists. She won the South Asia Book Award for Manjhi Moves a Mountain, the National Jewish Book Award and Sydney Taylor Honor for Dear Mr. Dickens, a true story that is the subject of an educational program offered by The Charles Dickens Museum in London, and Sydney Taylor Notables for A Queen to the Rescue, the Story of Henrietta Szold Founder of Hadassah, and Irving Berlin, the Immigrant Boy Who Made America Sing. All her books come with resources, teacher guides, and projects on nancychurnin.com