How to Turn Poems, Lyrics, & Folklore into Salable Children's Books: Using Humor or Proverbs

By Anne Hart

Do you want to adapt your poem to a storybook that tells a story in words, and pictures-or only amplify the images that you create with words? Would you rather turn your poem into a picture book that tells a story with pictures?

Will words take second place to illustrations? Decide first whether you will write a story book or a picture book. Then use the images in your poem to clarify your writing. You won't be able to read a picture book into a tape recorder or turn it into an audio book or radio play. You will be able to narrate a word book for audio playing.

Start with an inspirational poem, proverb, or song lyrics. Ask children what makes them laugh. You can make something out of nothing. You can make a story out of anything intangible, such as an idea with a plan still in your mind.

Capture your children's dreams, proverbs, song lyrics, and the surprise elements that make them laugh. Record imagination, "what-if" talk, and personal history. A folktale or story is something that could come from any place in the past, from science, or from nothing that you can put your hands on.

What children want in a book, poem, or folklore is a cave where they can go to be themselves. When suspending belief, children still want to be themselves as they navigate fantasy.

The story book becomes a den or tree house where children can go inside, shut the door, and play. Introduce children to poetry by showing how you transform your poem into a children's book by expanding and emphasizing significant events in the life story of one child.

Poems, memorable experiences, significant life events or turning points are all ways to make something out of nothing tangible. You begin re-working a concept, framework, or vision. Here's how to write, publish, and promote salable material from concept to framework to poem to children's book-step-by-step.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 17, 2005
• ISBN: 9781462065189

Anne Hart

Popular author, writing educator, creativity enhancement specialist, and journalist, Anne Hart has written 82 published books (22 of them novels) including short stories, plays, and lyrics. She holds a graduate degree and is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and Mensa.

Book preview

How to Turn Poems, Lyrics, & Folklore into Salable Children’s Books

Using Humor or Proverbs

Anne Hart

ASJA Press

New York Lincoln Shanghai

How to Turn Poems, Lyrics, & Folklore into Salable Children’s Books

Using Humor or Proverbs

Copyright © 2005 by Anne Hart

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any

means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ASJA Press an imprint of iUniverse, Inc.

iUniverse

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www.iuniverse.com

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ISBN-13: 978-1-5245-0112-9 (hc)

ISBN-13: 978-1-5245-0111-2 (sc)

ISBN-13: 978-1-5245-0110-5 (ebk)

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX B

APPENDIX C

INTRODUCTION

Use universal proverbs, poems, and folk tales to find and expand story material that you will turn into children’s books. The more your pictures speak, the fewer words you need to tell your story. Your next step is to connect with schools that invite book authors to classrooms or auditoriums. Ask children what makes them laugh, what makes them feel like themselves, and what they’d like to see in a book written with a particular age group in mind.

Visit schools if you want people to know you turn poems into children’s books. Let teachers, librarians, children, and parents’ groups know you write and/or illustrate books for children. Visit schools and become involved with programs that invite children’s book authors to visit schools, community centers, libraries, or other public settings to talk to children in group settings. Before you visit each school, create a program that you can tailor to fit the needs of a particular teacher’s curriculum. Ask for a written contract from each school. Make sure the contract shows what you’ll be paid and what you’re expected to do for these half-day visits.

Speak to small groups in classrooms or larger groups in auditoriums. If you don’t want to speak yourself, then organize speaker’s panels of authors and publishers who create, develop, or market children’s books. Offer to match speaker and school from among a list of published authors.

Provide keynote speakers for writers or educational conventions and school visits. Charge a 20 percent commission for matching the speaker with a school, professional association meeting, event planner, or corporate convention if the speaker is paid.

Stay connected with authors and publishers and the people who buy books. You can work part time matching speakers with schools or professional associations and writers’ conventions. You’ll get to know authors who speak publicly for a fee and their publishers. Your poems are hidden markets for children’s books. Here’s how to turn those poems into books and spin-offs. Not all writers enjoy speaking in public.

Popular children’s book authors who spend a half-day visiting a school command fees of $1,500 or more per visit. Inexperienced authors usually are offered less to start. You can host book signing events for more than one author and include yourself.

Work with your local PTA and ask whether you can have a teacher send home order forms for your book with each child at the end of the school day. Plan writing contests in partnership with various book stores.

Many books and articles tell you how to write a children’s book and how to promote your published writing. This book shows you step-by-step how to turn your poetry into salable and popular children’s books and spin-offs such as songs, audio books, animation scripts, games, toys, puppet theatre scripts, or learning materials.

The formula for adapting a poem to become a children’s book is to make your poem more concrete—more detailed by using action verbs instead of adjectives. Active verbs replace most adjectives when you turn your poem into a children’s book. Pare down the words in your poem to only what is necessary to make clearer the story line and most important message.

After all, it has been said that you get to the universal through the details. You show value by simplifying the message. Simplification means using short sentences that engage all the senses. A person isn’t merely described in a story as shy. He takes a sudden interest in his shoes.

Show body language and gestures. Gestures after dialogue in a novel or story are labeled as the tag lines. These gestures are used to describe action behind the words. An example is: Yes, she sniffed with disdain.

Tag lines are body gestures that answer the question ‘how’ she or he said the line of dialogue in any story or novel. These body gestures are seen by the person to whom your particular character speaks.

Then that character reacts to the other person’s body language and words with body gestures of his own. You describe the gestures with more tag lines. Additional words of dialogue are spoken. Then you insert a sentence of description.

Children’s books for readers aged four to eight use a few sentences of text and nearly an entire page filled with illustration. Older readers use less illustration and more text. First decide what age group you want to emphasize.

Next, select a suitable-themed poem and make a list of the most important messages in the poem. Your last step is to circle the words that stand out as story material before you begin to write your book.

Do you want to adapt your poem, folklore, or song lyric to a story book of words or pictures? Use words to amplify your images. Use pictures to expand words.

Tell a story with pictures. Let words take second place to illustrations when you write picture books for the very young child, aged 0 to 4. Words outnumber pictures when you’re writing for children aged nine to 12. Many children’s books for readers aged 4 to 8 use two thirds of the page for pictures and one or two paragraphs of words.

Decide first whether you will write a story book or a picture book. Then use the images in your poem, song lyric, proverb, oral history, or folkloric tale to clarify your writing. You won’t be able to read a picture book into a tape recorder or turn it into a radio play. A book emphasizing words over pictures can be adapted to narration for an audio book or radio play. Here’s how to make your abstract, salable poem vividly concrete and turn it into a well-crafted children’s book.

CHAPTER 1

Making a Concrete Story out of an

Abstract Poem

Capture Your Children’s Dreams

Start with an inspirational poem or song lyrics. You can make something out of nothing. You can make a story out of anything intangible, such as an idea with a plan still in your mind. Capture your children’s dreams, proverbs, song lyrics, and the surprise elements that make them laugh. Record imagination, what-if talk, and personal history. A folktale or story is something that could come from any place in the past, from science, or from nothing that you can put your hands on.

What children want in a book, poem, or folklore is a cave where they can go to be themselves. When suspending belief, children still want to be themselves as they navigate fantasy. The story book becomes a den or tree house where children can go inside, shut the door, and play. Introduce children to poetry by showing how you transform your poem into a children’s book by expanding and emphasizing significant events in the life story of one child.

Poems, memorable experiences, significant life events or turning points are all ways to make something out of nothing tangible. You begin re-working a concept, framework, or vision. Perhaps long ago that concept resulted in a poem.

Imagination helps you write or design books out of seemingly nothing. Make the intangible very tangible. Create your own universe by turning your abstract poems into concrete stories for children. Craft your own pop-up books or write fiction, science, or history for older children.

With illustrations in the best places of your story, you can create children’s books, audio books, or CDs with narrated stories set to music or spoken with sound effects, music, and healing tones for your imaginative tomes.

After you have adapted your poems to children’s stories, you’ll learn to launch your stories in the media, promote your stories, and market your stories. You’ll need to find free publicity. Here is how to do it and how to start with the basics. Start with a collection of your poetry. Select one poem that you will expand to make a book for children. Page length varies with age—about 22 pages for children aged 0-4; 32 pages for children aged four to eight, or 64 pages in length for children aged nine to 12. Page length refers to the book when published. Teen or young adult novels run about 35,000 to 40,000 words.

Design your own book cover. Scan it and turn it into a digital photo with a resolution of 300 dpi saved as a .tiff file. That way you can email it or upload it to a publisher’s browser or save it on a CD. Put your story into print using publishers of your choice, including print-on-demand publishers. Narrate your stories on tape, save to your computer, and transfer to a CD or DVD. Include in your multimedia presentation illustrations or photography, video clips, healing music, and text. Let’s begin.

What Poetry Will You Choose To Turn into Children’s Books?

Take your poetry collection suitable for the age group you choose from preschool to young adult and teenage readers and match it with a proverb so you can begin to adapt and expand your poem into a story. For an example, take the concept of making something out of nothing. All over the world there are folk tales about making something from nothing. The theme begins with a creator making a universe or a world out of nothing. Only there is no such thing as nothing. Basics always seem to come in threes—intelligence, matter, and energy.

You can personalize intelligence, matter and energy into any triune entity from father, son and Holy Spirit to mother, daughter and nature, back to intelligence, matter, and energy. Or parallel universes, rebirth, and life force, and anything else that represents the triune concept of everything coming in sets of three in this universe.

Use any proverb you want to emphasize in your story. My favorite concept is that you can make something out of nothing. If you can make a purse out of an overcoat, so can you fashion a story from a proverb. Who made something out of nothing? One day an entity created intelligence. Intelligence created energy. And energy created matter. Then matter created parallel universes, all with different laws of physics. And on the farm, intelligence created the idea of life. And life could not be contained. So life expanded through wormholes to all the universes. And intelligence created gravity. And gravity leaked from one universe to this universe, creating a weaker force. So something always came from nothing, because at the root of nothing always is intelligence.

How do you show something can come from nothing? First, read the children’s book (ages 4 to 8) titled, Something from Nothing, by Phoebe Gilman. Discuss the way the author unfolds the story.

The story comes from an old folktale. A boy receives a blanket from his grandfather as a baby. The boy grows attached to this blanket. Like everything else in this universe, the blanket has a life span in the sense that eventually it wears out. As the boy grows up, his grandfather takes the worn and frayed blanket, and makes it into a jacket that also becomes special to the boy. As the jacket frays with age, the grandfather makes a vest, then a tie, handkerchief, and finally a button. Note how the item grows smaller and smaller as the boy grows older. The point is when the button is no more in sight, the grandfather, a creative man, always makes something.

When there’s no material or tangible button in sight, the grandfather still can make something from what seems like nothing but actually is imagination or intelligence because the ending of the story emphasizes that you can make a story from nothing. Actually, you get the feeling at the end of the story that the reason why you can make a story from nothing is that you don’t need a piece of cloth (matter) to create something. All you need is intelligence and energy, which you have when you create a story from so-called (perceived) nothing. Your eyes deceive you, because you can create something from ‘nothing.’ You can write or voice a story.

That’s the point you need to understand when you adapt or ‘turn’ your poems into children’s stories. You need a message, a point of view, and a proverb. Then you turn your poems into a storybook for children. The poem that has a message based on a proverb or old folktale with a point-of-view or universal value is the type of story you want to write. It’s ageless, timeless, and can be used by teachers and parents for children’s activities based on your story book.

As an activity, people who work with children can have their students guess the next item that will be sewn, grown, or built from this type of a story book. When you adapt your poem to a story, go from the largest to the smallest. Children need concrete items to handle such as story strips. You can create blocks of paper cut into strips so students can put the story in order of size or time like a puzzle. Maybe you want a fresh angle on making something small out of something big—such as a story set at a recycling machine depot. Cans are crushed and fashioned into toys or utensils.

Use your imagination to recycle these universal folk tales from around the world based on proverbs or concepts of creation. You’re taking an abstract concept of creating something out of nothing and making your concept as concrete as possible by example and detail. You’re illustrating making a button out of a

works in children’s books, especially for the age four to eight set. Also, I’ve included some stories for 0 to age 4 children to be read by an adult.

When adapting your poems to books for children age 0 to 4, use texture, tone, and mood. The texture of the pages should be three-dimensional. Children should be able to touch and rub their fingers on the warm, fuzzy or quilted material on the cover or inside the book. Pop-up books are common.

You can also learn to design your own pop-up books by learning paper folding. Courses in adult education sometimes offer a course in hand-crafted gift book making. Using terry cloth or stuffed animals on the cover or pop-ups inside the book help to hold the attention of a child of preschool age as the adult reads the words.

Children feel and touch the texture, look at the illustrations and begin to associate the written word with the pictures. Storyline runs about one or two sentences per page for books published for children under age five. In books for children aged four to eight, text runs about a paragraph per page.

Keep paragraphs short and sentences very short—less than 10 words per sentence. Paragraphs consist of two sentences or three very short sentences that fit on the page under a large illustration that takes up at least two-thirds of the page. Text usually takes up the bottom quarter of the page with about an inch of space left under the text. These, usually hard-cover books for children aged four to eight run about 32 published pages in length. If you print your own books, be sure the cover is sturdy and waterproof.

Blank pages with textures or pop-ups, plus a hard cover increase the size and look of the book, which may be large in size, often 9 by 12 inches. The cover may have texture to touch such as a terry cloth animal or face, or may be smooth, waterproof, and colorful to hold attention. If you publish your own childen’s books, don’t put a tiny illustration at the top and a whole page of text in the middle.

You’ll find that distributers and bookstores won’t stock children’s books that have too much text. You can’t use the excuse that your book is meant to be read by adults. Books are for children to look at. And young children’s brains are hard-wired to look at large pictures and one or two sentences of text.

Children in the middle grades of elementary school enjoy books with two sentences to a paragraph of text at the bottom of the page. If the child is an avid reader at age eight, the child will gravitate toward large print books with illustrations and an impelling story line, including adventure and historic themes.

For older children, readers want to become engrossed in the story and characters that drive the story. Note the popularity Harry Potter and Goosebumps series. The storyline engrosses the reader and is back up with high media cov

Two tabs are skipped and the sentence of text is placed in the right hand, larger column. In the story below, the text part of the book submitted by the writer for publication takes only 30 pages for the rhythmic, short text.

The first two pages are left blank for the artist and publisher’s input, totaling 32 pages for the book. You have 30 pages of actual story writing or adapting your poem, plus two pages left for publisher’s information. Page one is labeled ‘cover’ and page 2 is left blank. Page 3 begins the story or poem’s actual words. Page 3 repeats the book title and contains the sentence, You have two eyes. Starting with page 4, the alphabet is introduced and follows through A to Z. The book uses nonrhyming, but rhythmic text with a steady beat that can be set to music if the content were put on a multimedia CD. I adapted the words that run in alphabetical order to a children’s book format from one of my free-form poems written back in 1959.

Your own stories may be written in the form of a book or adapted to musical narration and put on a CD for interactive use as learning materials or for listening. With added video clips, a DVD may be produced. Illustration on a DVD would become animation. You’d team up with an animation cartoonist or animator, and your book format would be adapted to to animation script format.

See this book’s chapter 3 on writing animation scripts with animation script sample. Use branding techniques on your poems. See chapter 2 on branding and creativity. I give poetry a mascot, the cat because poems have at least nine lives. Your poems can be adapted to at least nine formats in order to make them salable and competitive in the publishing world.

A poem has at least nine lives—

1. Text-formatted published children’s book or pop-up book (as you see below)

2. Cartoon-style animation on DVD

3. Graphic novel as in a comic book

4. Puppet theater, narration with music on a CD or read as an audio book

5. Recited publicly in a theater, auditorium or club as poetry or monologue

6. Toy, such as stuffed animal, doll, house, robot, or action figure

7. Computer or Video action game

8. Song lyrics set to music, MTVs, musical skits, rap, and advertising jingles.

9. Learning materials and interactive multimedia for school subjects such as science or even infomercials played at events, expos, trade shows, product demonstrations in department stores, and broadcasted at con-

ventions, video-streamed online with avatars (robotic personalities online), or podcasted on the Web as MP3 files or syndicated internationally online as feel-good poems or humor on RSS feeds.

(Stories are written by Anne Hart, © 2005.)

* * *

Books For Children Aged 0-4

EYES

Page

1. Cover: EYES

2. BLANK PAGE

3. Two eyes

You have two eyes.

4. -A-Two acrobat’s eyes above an altar.

5. -B-Two bouncing baby’s blue eyes brightly beaming.

6. -C-Two cold cat’s eyes catching canaries.

7. -D-Two deep darting duck eyes diving.

8. -E-Two Egyptian emerald eyes enjoying eerie events.

9. -F-Two fish eyes flirting, finding frisky frogs following.

10. -G-Two great grandma’s gray eyes glad getting good glasses.

11. -H-Two hardy hawk eyes hunting.

12. -I-Two idol’s insect eyes in ivory.

13. -J-Two juicy jellyfish eyes jutting.

14. -K-Two kind king’s eyes keeping knitted kittens knotted.

15. -L-Two lively little lamb eyes looking left.

16. -M-Two misty mother’s eyes making music matter.

17. -N-Two nervous newcomer’s eyes near noisy, nasty neighbors.

18. -O-Two oval Oriental eyes overlooking orbiting owls.

19. -P-Two proud puzzle peddler’s eyes peering prettily.

20. -Q-Two quick queen’s eyes quietly questioning quails.

21. -R-Two red runaway rabbit’s eyes rumored roaming rushed.

22. -S-Two skinny sailor’s silver eyes seeing salty seaweed served slowly, sings

simplesongs, saying, "Sandwich! Stew! Salad!

23. -T-Two twinkling teddybear’s eyes trailing twin tots turning twice.

Trim tykes trotting to toystores to teach the teddybear’s tune.

24. -U-Two unicorn eyes uniting uniquely until ugly umbrellas untie used

utensils.

25. -V-Two villager’s very violet eyes viewing vivid valley vines vanishing.

26. -W-Two weaver’s eyes wandering West watching windows, waiting,

welcoming weddings, whatever wit wills worthy work.

27. -X-Two X-ray eyes xeroxing Xmas xylophones.

28. -Y-Two young, yellow Yak’s eyes yearning yearly, yielding yonder yogi

Yankee’s yarn.

29. -Z-Two zigzagged, zesty zebra’s eyes zealously zeroing zoned zoos.

ass inside the class how to design the house that Aino built.

(*CAD stands for computer-aided design.)

8. This is the dear who began her career (Draw picture ofAino’s mom

drawing pictures with the mouse sitting at her computer

that designed the house that drawing a house.)

Aino built.

9. This is the store that sold the screen that colored the machine that used the mouse to scale down the house that Aino built.

(Show picture of computer store where a row of computer screens have colorful images on them.)

10. These are the dots that join the lots under the house made with the mouse that Aino built.

11. These are the lines that join the vines around the house drawn with the mouse that Aino built.

12. These are the children in

(Illustrate dots on lots.)

(Show vines connected by lines.)

(Picture of school children)

13. Here is the fun that Aino won (Show Aino designing.)

as she draws houses, blouses, dishes, wishes, stairs, chairs, tables, fables, games, names, nooks, books, sheets, feats, foxes, and boxes.

All drawn by the computer mouse

the school who use the tool on the machine to live their dream and build a house with the little white mouse.

who scales down the house that Aino built.

14. This is the machine Aino keeps clean (Show drawing of color printer.) that prints her tints.

15. This is the scanner that copies (Draw picture ofscanner.) a bannerdrawn by the mouse that

Aino built.

16. This is a slide that lets you ride (Computer screen shows a by clicking the mouse that garden slide.)

draws the house that Aino built.

17. This is the line that becomes a circle (Computer screen shows and turns to purple by tapping line and circle.)

the mouse that designs the house Aino built.

18. One day Aino decided that when (Show dog house shaped like she grew up, she wanted to build a an ape.)

house for her pup. This is the shape that looks like an ape drawn by the mouse that designs the dog house Aino built.

19. This is the ride designed with pride (Show playground ride.) that Aino built.

20. Draw the ride or the house (Show picture for reader to color.) that Aino built bright as a quilt.

What will you build with your mouse?

* * *

The Spice Store is written for early readers—kindergarten, first, and second grade students. The next version of the same story is for readers aged 9-12.

The Spice Store

1. Cover

2. Blank Page

3. The red brick spice store sells all you can eat and more.

4. Green peppers hang on a string running across the ceiling.

5. Pickled melons

are served with cheese.

Spicy ice cream, all you can freeze.

6. Bread is baked crusty and soft

When you bite a hole, it opens into a pocket.

7. Stuff the bread with hot cubes of roast. Then heat it up until to make garlic toast.

8. Chunks of peppers meet onions with spice. Eat the sandwich with pine nuts and rice.

9. Dust with lemon pepper, sage, and thyme. Chew it so slowly and take your time.

10. Smell that orange honey. It makes your head spin. Walnuts in the cellar stand next to flour in the bin.

11. Music wails from a land far away.

Nothing comes in cans. All’s made fresh every day.

12. Everything’s in bulk, barrels, boxes, and jars. It’s all ground by hand under the stars.

13. Sugar is ground to a powder. Chocolate is brought to a boil.

14. Ice cream in tiny cups are set around the tables.

15. Day after day, all come in to talk.

Young and old sit with sleeping babies in laps.

who belongs to my friend, Anna.

4. There’s an iguana in my sauna trying to drive a green Honda.

5. There’s an iguana in my sauna playing music in the corner.

6. There’s an iguana in my sauna, and my mom’s trying to warn her.

7. There’s an iguana on my sauna floor who thinks she’s a small dinosaur.

8. There’s an iguana in my sauna spout who rides the steam clouds coming out.

9. There’s an iguana in my sauna, and I think it’s time to pawn her.

10. There’s an iguana in my sauna, green as wheat grass in the lawn-a!

11. There’s an iguana in my sauna where her babies were just born-a.

12. There’s an iguana in my sauna, with the biggest mouth to yawn-a.

13. There’s an iguana in my sauna, sleeping peacefully ‘till morn-a!

14. There’s an iguana in my sauna playing with little Jack Horner.

15. There’s an iguana in my sauna mending a shirt that is torn-a.

16. There’s an iguana in my sauna growing bolder who’d rather stand on my shoulder.

can open based on what you see, hear, and touch or sense in nature and all around you.

What If?

1. What if?

2. What if we wonder?

3. What if there’s another way to do it?

4. What if we could invent everything all over again a different way?

5. What if we could dance to a different drummer?

6. What if we could sing a different tune?

7. What if we could grow stronger by listening to our inner selves?

8. What would we hear?

9. What if we think for ourselves?

10. What if we always ask why?

11. What if the real world isn’t real?

12. What if we ask more questions?

13. What if we listen more closely?

14. What if we look at things in a new light?

15. What if wonder whether it’s true?

16. What if we look for something more?

17. What if we make sense of things?

18. What if we explain what happened in a new way?

Those animals will love the treat.

9. Big, bright, pink sled,

are your Alaskan doggies fed?

10. The Huskies drive us through the snow, wearing tinkling bells as they go.

11. Big, bright, brown boat,

what big rule makes you stay afloat?

12. Your wood is full ofair,you say, and keeps you out of water’s way.

13. Big, bright, mauve trike,

when can you trade up for a bike?

14. When you are big enough to ride,

my training wheels will stop your slide.

15. Big, bright, ice skates,

will they help you make figure eights?

16. When winter freezes the pond white, skating back home will feel just right.

17. Big, bright, rocket,

which will weigh more in your pocket?

18. The meteors that cross dark space,

or stars that look like pale, stitched lace?

19. Big, submarine,

you can imagine in your dream.

20. If there’s parking space in the sea, there must be tourists just like me.

21. Big, bright, beige mule,

walk through Grand Canyon after school.

7. "Hi! Mr. Tuck! Did you get