Post ReFoReMo Check In

Congratulations again on your valiant efforts to take on the Reading for Research Challenge in March! We know that many of you are working at your own pace and we encourage that whole-heartedly. (That's what we are doing, too!)

For our check-in today, we wanted to remind you that today is the last day to enter the prize drawings. You will have until 11:59 p.m. tonight, April 3, to enter the drawing. To be eligible to enter, you had to register for the challenge by March 4, comment on every ReFoReMo 2018 post, and make efforts to read and research picture books consistently during this past month. You will find the Rafflecopter entry form in this post: http://www.reforemo.com/2018/03/reforemo-appreciation-day-rafflecopter.html  You will only enter the drawing one time to be eligible for all prizes. 

If you have not yet had a chance to watch the Facebook live wrap-up post, you will want to do that here. In the video, you will find that we would like to feature your mentor text reviews in April. Which mentor texts revealed the craft of writing or illustrating in a particularly eye-opening way and why? We'd love to feature reviews of the books you studied from our reading list or the books of our presenters first. However, if you utilized a different mentor text that you know will help your fellow kidlit creatives, feel free to send. You will find our submission addresses here. We request your .doc reviews, very brief bios, and .jpg headshots by April 10, if possible, but not later than April 17. 

To start you off, here is a review of a brand new picture book. We hope that you will attempt to keep up with the most recent releases as they tell you a lot about the current market.

Happy Book Birthday to Maria Gianferrari, a 2017 ReFoReMo presenter!

Terrific Tongues by Maria Gianferrai and Jia Liu

Facts and information are fun when presented in an interesting way. I have often thought that if nonfiction books had been as interesting as they are today, I would have been better at science and social studies as a kid. Without interest behind the facts, they are just facts. But Maria Gianferrari knows how to connect readers. Terrific tongues presents the tongue as other comparable objects: the straw, the sword, a party blower, a nose, a mop, a wash cloth, a whip, and so on.  And since the main character is a monkey, it creates an opportunity for some incredibly fun illustrations as it imagines itself with different types of tongues. Presenting information in this way is like creating a hook and a page turn for every object. The book becomes a trivia game, and kids cannot wait to turn the page to find out what kind of animal each tongue belongs to. 

As you work on your nonfiction manuscripts, are you presenting information in interesting ways? Are you thinking like a child? Do you know what interests a child? Are you consistently eliciting page turn opportunities and hooking the reader?