Category Archives: books

Reflecting on Writing Books with Storybird

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I’ve been thinking of my writing process when it comes to using Storybird for creating my 7 picture books in 7 days, as part of Paula Yoo’s challenge. Honestly, I could not have even considered this challenge if I had to do the art, and my hats go off to anyone who has been able to keep the pace. Even Paula has been reflecting on the challenge of the challenge.

I decided early on to use Storybird, which provides you with illustrations and a book-creator tool. You write the story, constructed out of the images at the site. There is a wide selection of art, and styles. The end result is an e-book that you can embed in other sites as well as become part of the Storybird community.

I purposely went into each day with no story idea whatsoever. None. I really wanted to find a story as I discovered the illustrations, which is an odd way of going about writing a book, if you think about it. Mostly, we write stories from idea that germinate in our minds or come from characters that start to live a bit in our imagination.

I avoided that. Purposely. I felt as if I were backing in, using some sort of reverse writing.

I would wander around the Storybird collections, trying to find some art that piqued my interest and then I would slowly formulate a story idea. A lot of times, it was nothing but dead ends. The story didn’t always hold or gel. I tried not to think of audience, either, which is another no-no for writing stories, right? We are often told to keep our intended audience in front of us. Here, I kept the audience behind me and only at the end, when Storybird prompted me, did I even think about who my story might be a appropriate for.

The result is a series of hits and misses this week.

I really liked the first book — MoonSong — and I enjoyed the one about a girl dreaming of her future — Remember — but wished I had done a better job with another — To Dance is To Disappear (I couldn’t find the right rhythm consistent with what I was trying to convey about the creative process of dancing) — and I thought two of the books to be too cute with not enough substance — The Best Ice Cream in the Galaxy and Go Outside and Play! — while another one tried to teach a lesson but got too bogged down on me — The Boy with the Angry Stomach (although I did have fun with “voice” in that one, particularly the talking piece of bread and the invisible audience of listeners).

One of my stories completely and utterly derailed itself midway through. It was an odd one about a girl who has been shipwrecked, and is now all alone, but is discovered by the forest animals who lead her to a house situated on top of a mountain. That’s as far as I got because none of the illustrations led me any farther into my story narrative and I could not for the life of me figure out how to get this girl moving forward in any feasible direction of the narrative. Here, instead of being inspired by the art, I was held back, and the story died in the draft bin.

All in all, it was fun to do this challenge, but it was a challenge. I have one more book in the bin for tomorrow, the seventh day. It’s no award winner. It’s about how to write a story. Come back tomorrow and check it out, if you have a minute.

Peace (in the reflection),
Kevin

http://storybird.com/

Picture Book 6: Go Outside and Play!

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I saw one of the illustrations in this set in Storybird and thought: that was so me as a kid — reading books, oblivious to the world. And my mom or dad would tell me to get outside and play. Inspired, then, I created this picture book story as part of a challenge by Paula Yoo to come up with seven books in seven days.

This is Go Outside and Play!

Go Outside and Play! on Storybird
Peace (in the imagination),
Kevin

National Picture Book Week, book three: Remember

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This is the third picture book I have made this week as part of a challenge with Paula Yoo and I was thinking of this girl under the bridge and imagined that she was dreaming of her future. The word “remember” came to mind, although it is not clear if she is looking ahead or looking back. I purposely kept that somewhat nebulous, although the last page gives some hints.

Read Remember.

Remember … on Storybird

Peace (in the books),
Kevin

Picture Book Challenge, Day 2: The Boy with the Angry Stomach

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I’m in day two of the National Picture Book Writing Week (NaPiBoWriWee — that’s a mouthful, eh?)  with Paula Yoo, and again, I turn to Storybird for the art and inspiration. In this book, I imagine a storyteller (a piece of bread!) telling the tale of a young boy learning about anger. The story emerged from looking at the picture on the cover here. I wondered: what would a face in your stomach say to you? And what would the kid think? From there came The Boy with the Angry Stomach.

The Boy With the Angry Stomach on Storybird

Peace (in the story),
Kevin

Day One: MoonSong

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I realized that I needed to wait until the kind folks at Storybird moderated my picture book story until I could get the embed code for it. This is part of the Picture Book Challenge.

This book is called MoonSong.

MoonSong on Storybird

Peace (in the song),
Kevin

National Picture Book Writing Week

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Not another challenge. Yes, another challenge. This one is National Picture Book Writing Week, in which blogger Paula Yoo is challenging folks to create seven picture books in seven days. That seems like a lot, and if I were to draw, it would be impossible. But I am a writer and I do love a challenge, so I am going to use Storybird to see how many books I can create this week.

Here is Day One. The book is called MoonSong, and I was thinking of how to weave music into a picture book story. I wondered: what if the moon were inspiration but didn’t know it. (I am having trouble finding the embed code, so here is the link to the book at the Storybird site).

MoonSong

Peace (in the books),
Kevin

Book Review: Building Literacy Connections with Graphic Novels

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I recently picked up Building Literacy Connections with Graphic Novels: Page by Page, Panel by Panel, mostly because it is edited by James Bucky Carter, whose writing and links and insights around comics and graphic novels I enjoy reading about. (Check out his blog: EN/SANE World). In this collection of essays from various educators, Carter weaves together ways in which teachers can bring graphic novels and comics into the curriculum.

Carter’s introduction gives some nice background knowledge around the connections between art and writing, and the form of graphic novels. In the book, Carter makes the case for these forms to be considered real and authentic forms of literacy, and not just something to be laughed off or put out for the down-times of the classroom.

“There is a graphic novel for every learner in your English language arts classroom,” is how Carter begins, and he ends his introduction — first, by acknowledging that more inquiry research in the classroom needs to be done and shared — by declaring, “Bit by bit, we can expand the Golden Age of the graphic novel in the domain of education.”

Not every chapter had me engaged, but the one I really liked was  by Don Leibold, whose Abandon Every Fear, Ye That Enter: The X-Men Journey through Dante’s Inferno, about the connections between an X-Men story arc and Dante’s work, and how a teacher might use on to supplement the other. I vaguely seem to remember the comic that Liebold refers to, and it is fascinating to think of the two stories, side by side.

Most of the chapters deal with reading comics and graphic novels, and I have to say that the chapter that seemed to suggest the use of technology (Using Graphic Novels, Anime and the Internet in an Urban Setting by Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher) didn’t really do much for me in terms of technology and comics. I was hoping and wishing for more, particularly given the influx of digital comics and the ability to create them easier than ever before.

Luckily, Carter ends the anthology with a sharp chapter on bringing young writers along with comics as a source of mentor text and inspiration with a Comic Book Show ‘N Tell Project in which students work on storyboarding, editing and writing with a voice for an audience.

If you are a teacher considering the merits of graphic novels, then Carter’s anthology collection is a good read and a good starting point for those folks trying to make a case for comics. And as Carter points out himself, I hope books like this one continue the push of graphic literacy in the classroom for all students.

Peace (on the page),
Kevin

PS — Today is Free Comic Book Day, so get yourself down to the nearest comic book shop and grab some comics for the classroom. The free stuff is not really the best stuff — mostly samples and anthologies — but still, they can make a good supplementary classroom resource.

Hackers, revisited

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In the recent Wired Magazine article, writer Steven Levy has an interesting revisit to a book that I once just loved, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, which sought to document and profile those folks who sought to revolutionize the personal computer, mostly with the ideals that technology could eventually be put into the hands of many. In Wired, Levy tries to reconnect with some of the people he profiled in his book, including Steve Wozniak and Bill Gates.

It should be noted that Levy’s use of the word Hackers does not donate someone seeking to crack into a computer or software for malicious intent; Instead, a Hacker defined by Levy is someone who understands the underlying structure of a computer or network, and seeks to improve it or re-imagine it through skills and imagination.

What is striking is how Levy also shows how many of the ideals of that earlier generation have splintered into a couple of directions. Gates urged early on that his work be compensated (which caused an uproar in the technology community at the time) so that he could use the money to hire more engineers and make better products. Others, such as Lee Felsenstein, still held the line that technology should be adapted and used by as many people, and with as few hurdles as possible, which comes into conflict with the for-profit model.

For me, I was never nor will I ever be a Hacker, per se. I don’t have those skills. But when I was creating my webcomic, Boolean Squared, I used some of the ideas behind Levy’s profiles to inform the motivation and personalities of my two central characters — Boolean and Urth. These kids love to dive into the computer and make it work for them, not the other way around, and they are not afraid to yank the cover off anything. I wanted that adventuresome spirit from the beginning days of computer programming to come through with my characters.

Today, Levy notes, we have the continued development of the Open Source Movement — as shown by such companies as Mozilla and the various Linux offshoots — along with ad-driven companies such as Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook. Levy suggest that Zuckerman and his kin are the indirect offspring of those early days of hacking, although Zuckerman notes that he is less interested in the underlying “code” than the overall use of technology to connect people together as a social fabric. And my guess it that more than a few of the original hackers would be mortified by that association.

Check out the article on Wired.

Peace (in the wired world),
Kevin