Is Your Picture Book Actually A Chapter Book Five Ways To Find Out, By Hillary Homzie

by Hillary Homzie Sometimes a picture book manuscript begs to become a chapter book. This has happened to me. Several years back, I wrote a picture book about an exuberant kid’s attempts to become class flag leader. Yet I couldn’t make the story viable. Even when I took out the set up or made the dialogue pithier It was like trying to wedge my size-nine feet into size-six shoes on the sale rack. No matter how hard I tried, the story felt constricted. This is not an uncommon experience. Picture book Author Pat Zietlow Miller (Be Kind) told me recently that: “There was one time I started writing what I fully intended to be a picture book, only to discover it really wasn’t. There was too much stuff to be contained in the limits of a picture book. So I turned it into a chapter book.” Author Candice Ransom (Amanda Panda) has also successfully turned part of a picture book into a novel. But it wasn’t obvious that it was something that she should do right away. “It’s never easy to tell,” she reports.  â€œPicture books require a Big Idea to differentiate them from a magazine short storyâ€"a pleasant interlude, but nothing that lingers afterward.  Even then, sometimes the idea is too big.” Too big. Yup. I understand what “too big” feels like. That’s exactly why I turned Ellie May on Presidents’ Day into a chapter book, and it’s coming out this December (squeeee!), along with a companion novel, Ellie May on April Fools’ Day (more squeeee!)     The question becomesâ€"how do you know when you have “too much stuff”? In other words, how do you tell when your picture book manuscript actually wants to grow some words and turn into a chapter book? I’ve been thinking about this, and I’ve come up with five central questions that will help writers discover the answer.   1. Is your exposition illustration-independent? Picture books almost always require an interplay between words and pictures. Chapter books don’t. If you find yourself leaning towards exposition that doesn’t require illustration, you might have a chapter book on your hands. As a quick explanation or reminder, exposition is the introduction of important background information. For example, setting, characters and events. But wait, you’re saying. Don’t chapter books have illustrations? Yup. And some are heavily illustrated. Jeffery Ebbeler created close to thirty interior illustrations for Ellie May on Presidents’ Day. They add to the story, but a reader doesn’t require one of Jeff’s illustrations in order to decode the text. The pictures are additive versus essential. Of course, that doesn’t make them not awesome, because they are (and yes, I’m heavily biased)! For example, in Ellie May on April Fools’ Day, we have this illustration of the second grader and her family about to go out birdwatching: Here’s a sentence that encapsulates the scene: “Dad reappeared with a pair of binoculars.” The illustration shows Dad in the doorway with a pair of, well, binoculars. The text helps readers to visualize and understand the scene, but there aren’t visual cues that move the story beyond the words. In a chapter book, an illustration doesn’t usually act as an ironic statement. For clarification, here are some strong examples of visual irony that one typically sees only in picture books. A page in Doreen Cronin’s Diary of a Worm, reads: Fishing season started today. We all dug deeper. We learn important background info about the season. However, the text doesn’t tell us how this time of year affects worms. We need to see the illustration in order to glean the meaning. A cutaway illustration reveals a giant shovel (with an empty pail labeled “bait”) and the worried worms sequestered in their underground home. This creates a sense of irony. The worms aren’t digging deeper to find bait, but instead to escape from being bait. In order for the humor to work, the reader requires visual cues. We see the same thing in Anne Marie Pace’s Vampirina Ballerina. On one of the early pages, we have: If you’re worried about meeting the other dancers, bring along a friendly face or two. The text on its own suggests that the young dancer is bringing along a friendly looking family or some pets. However, the illustration reveals that Vampirina (who could easily be an Addams Family cousin) brings along a green-skinned, Lurch-ish looking companion, a black cat and a bat. At first, none of these characters appear conventional friendly. Yup, more visual irony. In sum, chapter book texts don’t usually offer up visual irony opportunities (I say usually because every rule is meant to be broken, but that’s a topic for another post). Instead, they are much more prescriptive. In the picture book version of Ellie May on Presidents’ Day, I was overwriting and not allowing room for the illustrator. In other words, I was acting like a chapter book writer. Here’s a few lines from my manuscript that just don’t work as a picture book text: I scooped my hands into the box, and tossed worms and mulberry leaves across the room. “Be Free!” I said. Worms landed on the floor. One landed on Ms. Silva’s head. For a picture book, there’s going to be an illustrator. That means she or he will draw the worms and the mulberry leaves, and yes, the worm landing on the teacher’s head. If the above lines were more picture book text appropriate, they would read something like this: I scooped my hands into the box. The worms must be set free! So ask yourself, do you want to step aside and allow the illustrator to do his or her job? Or do you reallyâ€"in your heart-of-heartsâ€"want to create more of the visual narrative work? I guess, in my inner core, for the Ellie May books, I wanted to paint the complete scenes with my words. Side note: none of the above text actually appears in the chapter book version of Ellie May on Presidents’ Day because of how much I revised. Ah, revision. How wonderful and yet how hard it is to throw away your darlings, but you never knowâ€"you might get to show them off in a blog post.   2. Does your picture book manuscript cry out to be longer? In today’s picture book market, texts are short, averaging about 500 words. Now that doesn’t mean in the nonfiction market we aren’t seeing 700-page manuscripts or that someday the 1200- word picture book won’t make a comeback, but, on average, short is the operative word. If you must heartily chop in order to get your picture book manuscript down to the golden 500 words and it’s mightily upsetting, you might consider taking your story into a longer form, such as the chapter book. Maybe you want to be more expansive. Perhaps you want to write 3,000 â€" 8,000 words or even more. Allow yourself this. If you really want to write a picture book manuscript, please, go ahead. But, maybe, somewhere deep down, you don’t want to go on the picture book diet. You want to expand a bit, or even a lot.   3. Does your picture book manuscript have a subplot? Picture books should typically contain one plot stream. I’ve critiqued picture book manuscripts where a secondary character steals the show and we learn about his or her wants and needs. This is not a good idea. In picture books, the protagonist is the star. There just isn’t enough real estate for you to truly explore other characters’ goals. However, this can be done in a chapter book. But not a whole lot. Chapter books can only handle very small subplots that don’t take up a lot of space. Simply think about how other characters’ needs interrupt or illuminate the main character’s goals. For example, in Ellie May on April Fools’ Day, Lizzy, Ellie May’s best friend, sometimes slows her down. We find out that Lizzy doesn’t feel very confident in athletics and really wants to win at something. Lizzy thumped the red ball into Mo’s square. He slammed it into another square. “I’m not out yet,” Lizzy said. This was a surprise, considering how she normally plays. “Okay, I’ll cheer for you.” I raised my hands in the air, pretending to wave swishy pom-poms. “Way to go, Lizzy!” Owen smashed the ball into Lizzy’s square. She missed the return. “Out!” yelled Pablo. Lizzy pushed up her glasses and harrumphed. “I never win.” Later, in the book, you can bet that I’m going to have Lizzy win at something. Learning how to lose and how to win gracefully is one of the themes in Ellie May on April Fools’ Day. Remember, in a picture book, you’re not going to want to use subplots. That means if you really want to employ them, maybe you should try out longer form fiction.   4. Is your protagonist over the age of six? Most picture books protagonists are preschool through early primary school-aged children, although there are exceptions, especially for non-humans. But when you are dealing with people, if your protagonist is seven or eight, it’s likely a chapter book. If the main character is nine or ten, then it’s probably a middle grade novel. Author Saadia Faruqi created a picture book featuring spirited Yasmin, and was very content with her story. In fact, she says she would have been “perfectly happy with it as picture book.” However, her publishing company was excited about bringing Saadia’s story to older kids, and that’s how Meet Yasmin, a much-lauded chapter book came to fruition. Sometimes this all comes about in a rather surprising but auspicious way. The lesson here is to be open!   5. In addition to having a big idea, do you have a larger-than-life character? In general, chapter books are not sold as individual titles, but as a series of four (to start). Picture books, on the other hand, are usually sold as individual titles. That doesn’t mean you can’t get an entire series going. Witness the Vampirina books. The Fancy Nancy books etc. But usually, authors don’t sell a picture book series. They sell one book that does so well that readers demand more. However, if have a really appealing and distinctive character who just calls outâ€"please make me into a seriesâ€"then you might want to think about writing a chapter book because that’s how they usually rollâ€"in multiples. The basic message here is that you have options. You can revise your overstuffed manuscript and refine it so that you’re within picture book conventions or, just maybe, you have a chapter book on your hands, or even a middle grade novel. So many possibilities! Isn’t it all exciting? Okay, I admit it. I still, to this day, will forget my shoe size and try to squeeze my foot into a sleek pump that’s a size too small, as long as it’s on the 75% off blow-out sale rack. After all, a girl can try. Hillary Homzie is the author of the forthcoming chapter book, Ellie May on Presidents’ Day (Charlesbridge, Dec.18, 2018), which is about a second grader navigating honesty and leadership. Hillary promises she didn’t set up the current political climate to tie-into her book. As a former sketch comedian, she (hopefully) knows a thing or two about how to be funny and not hurt feelings, which is the theme of Ellie May on April Fools’ Day (Charlesbridge, Dec.18, 2018). As the author of the chapter book series, Alien Clones From Outer Space (Simon & Schuster/Aladdin), she particularly enjoys collecting antennae to occasionally wear to school visits. Hillary has also written middle grade novels, including the Queen of Likes (Simon & Schuster/Aladdin M!X) The Hot List,  (Simon & Schuster/M!X),  Things Are Gonna Get Ugly  (Simon & Schuster/M!X), Pumpkin Spice Secrets (Sky Pony/Swirl),  and the forthcoming Apple Pie Promises (October 2, 2018, Sky Pony/Swirl). Hillary teaches chapter book and middle grade writing online at the Children’s Book Academy. During the summers, she teaches in the children’s Writing and Illustrating MFA Program at Hollins University.   Check out her chapter book course here  and her middle grade course here. She loves answering questions about all things chapter book. You can reach her at  HillaryHomzie.com. @HillaryHomzie