SCBWI LA: Day 2 (#LA10SCBWI)

Opening keynote by Jon Scieszka, the nation’s first National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature:

• “Your mission is to be a storyteller.”
• He suggests reading the BEST children’s books, but also, “Read the the worst children’s books.”
• On Pope Benedict’s first children’s book: “Hey, I don’t get in your turf!”

National Book Award winner, M. T. Anderson:

• Lin Oliver, in her introduction of M. T. Anderson, says, “He creates books for thinking kids.”
• From the literature of his youth, he recalls, the “mood of the place, the sense of expansive landscape, the romance of geography.”
• “Books take us away from home so we can see home…through estrangement we are forced to see what we’ve know in new way.”

Break out session with Francesco Sedita, publisher of Grosset & Dunlap and Price Stern Sloan says, “Mass market is great quality at a great price.”

Break-out session with Coleen Paratore, author of 14 books in 6 years: “I try not to think about anything [when I write]. I try to hear what’s in my head and capture it.”

Afternoon keynote illustrator and four-time Golden Kite winner, Loren Long:

• Search for the ’emotional hit’ in your book.
• His favorite childhood books were The Poky Little Puppy, The Little Engine That Could, and Ferdinand. “Why did I love [these] books so much? The book was my friend.”