ReFoReMo Day 8: Author/Illustrator Don Tate Goes Back to Basic Storytelling

When I first started writing back in 2009, some of my picture book writing buddies suggested I read 300 picture books. I already had way more than 300 picture books in my studio, but while I’d studied and admired the pictures, I hadn’t actually read many of them. 

The first one I read came highly suggested by picture book writing buddy Dianna Aston. She said that anything by Kathleen Krull, and specifically, WILMA UNLIMITED (Harcourt), was the perfect mentor text for a newbie author, like me, needing to study the storytelling structure. Now the book was first published in 1996, but a strong storytelling structure is timeless. I’ve used WILMA UNLIMITED as a mentor text for just about every book I’ve written since.

 

In terms of basic story telling structure, the following are oldies but goodies, too: 

 

Frida, by Jonah Winter and Ana Juan

Tomas and the Library Lady, Pat Mora and Raul Colon

Not Norman Kelly Bennett and Noah Z. Jones

Anything written or illustrated by Eric Rohman

 

Don Tate is an award-winning illustrator of numerous critically acclaimed books for children, including No Small Potatoes: Junios G. Groves and His Kingdom in Kansas, Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson’s Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions,  Hope’s Gift, Swish! The Slam-Dunking, Alley-Ooping, High-Flying Harlem Globetrotters, and many others.

 

He is also an award-winning author. Some of his books for children include: Strong As Sandow: How Eugen Sandow Became The Strongest Man on Earth; Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton; It Jes’ Happened: When Bill Traylor Started To Draw, and William Still and His Freedom Stories: Father of the Underground Railroad.

 

Don is a founding host of the The Brown Bookshelf –a blog dedicated to books for African American young readers; and a member of the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign, created to address the lack of diverse, non-majority narratives in children’s literature. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his family.