1 | Cathy C. Hall Writes

In keeping up with Picture Book Idea Month, another SCBWI Southern Breezer stepped up to share how a couple of ideas came to her. Jo S. Kittinger has written a ton of children’s books, she’s a Co-Regional Adviser for Southern Breeze, and she’s a much-in-demand speaker. How does she ever find time to get a picture book idea? I’ll let Jo explain how she catches up with her flitting ideas!

Picture book ideas are like hummingbirds. They zip through my mind on a regular basis. Some I catch and cage in my idea file, some get by before I write them down and are quickly forgotten, others land on my computer and demand to be written.

Rosa’s Bus: the Ride to Civil Rights was one that landed in my office. On my phone to be exact. Donny Williams, who owned Bus #2857 before it was sold to the Henry Ford Museum, called me up out of the blue and asked if I could direct him to a children’s writer that might be interested in writing a book about the bus! He had worked on an adult book dealing with the civil rights movement and his editor was interested in a children’s book about the bus. It turns out that his editor declined the manuscript I wrote, as it was not what she had envisioned. But some time later, after Larry Rosler (editor at Boyds Mills Press) spoke at a Southern Breeze SCBWI conference, I submitted the manuscript to him and he quickly accepted it.

The House on Dirty-Third Street, to be released Spring 2012 with Peachtree Publishers, was a humming idea that came from a slip of the tongue. My husband, Rick, and I were traveling and looking for an address when I stumbled trying to say 33rd Street. It came out Dirty-Third Street and I began wondering what type of place that would be. This picture book has been many years in the making. Thomas Gonzales created fabulous illustrations and I can’t wait to see the finished book!

Of course, there have been hundreds of idea birds that escaped, flitting past while I was pre-occupied. I’m sure 2-3 were likely award winners! Those seem to be the hardest to catch! But I’ve learned to keep a window in my mind always open to welcome ideas.

And P.S. I happen to know that Rosa’s Bus won a 2011 Crystal Kite Member Choice Award. So if I were you, I’d keep that window WIDE open and hope a hummingbird idea flits in!

For Picture Book Writing Month, I thought it would be fun to ask some of the picture book writers in my own little corner of the world (or in SCBWI/ Southern Breeze, to put it another way) how they came up with the idea for their published picture books. And so here’s Nancy Raines Day on how she came up with the idea for her scary (but adorable) On A Windy Night:

One windy October night in 2001, I heard a newscast about how the terrorists might be planning to attack a mall on Halloween. Thinking about how we humans, with our wild imaginations, can scare ourselves sillier than anyone else can, I stepped outside to clear my head.

Listening to the wind rustling through the dried cornstalks in my husband’s garden as I swam in our backyard pool, I wondered–as I sometimes do about sounds–how would you spell that? I decided on cracklety-clack. Poetry often comes to me when I’m doing something rhythmic, like swimming, walking, or rocking. The refrain popped into my head:

Cracklety-clack, bones in a sack.

They could be yours–if you look back.

Then I got the first stanza:

On a windy night, on a winding road,

A boy walked home with a heavy load.

That much was a gift. But then I had to figure out, who was the boy? What was he carrying? What was the story? It took years to come together–after I had my own lost-in-the-woods-at-night experience!

Oh, Nancy, I SO want to hear about that lost-in-the-woods-at-night experience! And I so love how just a sound, a sound, was the start of On a Windy Night. Thanks so much for the inspiration! And P.S. you’ll find more good stuff where that came from over at Nancy’s place (or her website, to put it another way).