The Yarn: Where Things Stand and a Call for Ideas
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About Travis Jonker
Travis Jonker is an elementary school librarian in Michigan. He writes reviews (and the occasional article or two) for School Library Journal and is a member of the 2014 Caldecott committee. You can email Travis at scopenotes@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter: @100scopenotes.
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I would love to see you profile one of the terrific new narrative nonfiction titles around–perhaps something by Steve Sheinkin or Candace Fleming?
I would love it if you guys would fly to France and kidnap Mo Willems. Then you could film him making books in a dungeon.
In all seriousness, though, I think it might be cool if you focused on a new and u cloning author (like Carter Higgins?) and talked about the struggles of breaking into the industry, finding an agent, working with an editor, and seeing the first book in print.
Sigh that was supposed to say “upcoming” not “u cloning.”
#TheYarnSeason2ideas
How about you and Colby spend a week as flies on the wall in the Blackwell/Floca/Ruzzier/Marciano studio in Brooklyn (does this group have a name?). Each episode could focus on the current in-progress work of one of illustrators. You could talk to each artist about their in-progess work as well as about their studiomates’ in-progress work. I would love listen to them bouncing ideas off each other and giving advice to one another. I also want to hear the amazing B-roll you could capture of them all working. Just imagine listening to them sharpening their pencils, mix paints, check email, anything really. How cool would it be to have capture the magic behind a future caldecott winning book as its being made!