FAQ: Former Students

a.visits.250 I started teaching children’s book writers at Southern Methodist University in 1999. The following year, I co-taught a University of North Texas children’s literature class online.

Writers outside the area asked me to teach them online, too, so in January 2001 I started my first online workshop and I have been teaching children’s book writing workshops ever since.

My students come from all levels of the continuum, from beginner to advanced. Some writers sold the books they wrote and revised in the workshops — or the one-to-one critiques — while others continued to master their craft and sold their first book later. (Writing is re-writing!)


In 2019, Alma and How She Got Her Name, by Juana Martinez-Neal, one of my former students, was selected as a Caldecott Honor Book.


The year 2024 will be my 25th year working as freelance developmental editor. I’ve worked for publishers in the United States and Canada – and helped writers and illustrators all around the world develop their books. In 2023, my former students published 128 books! I’ve included a few book covers so you can see how varied their books are.

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | R | S | T | V | W | Y

A

B

In 2010, Carmen T. Bernier-Grand, another former student, won her third Pura Belpré Award for Diego: Bigger Than Life.

C

Dear Mr. Dick­ens written by Nancy Churnin won the 2021 National Jewish Book Award in the Children’s Pic­ture Book cat­e­go­ry, and Sydney Taylor Book Award Silver Medal.

D

E

Mockingbird

In 2010, former student Kathy Erskine won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for her book Mockingbird.

F

G

H


The 2014 book Grandfather Gandhi, co-written by Arun Gandhi and former student Bethany Hegedus, was a Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the Year Selection, CBC/NCSS Notable Social Studies Trade Book, CCBC Choices, Capitol Choices List, Eureka Nonfiction Gold Award, and a Texas Bluebonnet Master List Title

I

J

K

L

Former student Irene Latham won the ILA Lee Bennett Hopkins Promising Poet Award for her book Dear Wandering Wildebeest: And Other Poems from the Water Hole in 2016.

In 2021, former student Kelly Starling Lyons’s beginning reader Ty’s Travels: Zip, Zoom! was a (Theodor Seuss) Geisel Award Honor Book.

In 2022, The People’s Painter: How Ben Shahn Fought for Justice with Art written by Cynthia Levinson won the Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal. It was also a National Jewish Book Award Finalist, a Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of 2021, and a Junior Library Guild Gold Seal book.

M

In 2018, former student Jennifer Tzivia MacLeod won the SCBWI Crystal Kite Award for her picture book Yossi and the Monkeys.

N

O

P

In 2021, Annette Bay Pimentel’s book All the Way to the Top: How One Girl’s Fight for Americans with Disabilities Changed Everything was a Schneider Family Book Award Honor Picture Book.

020115 ALA Midwinter

In 2015, Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker, by former student Patricia Hruby Powell, was selected as a Sibert Honor Book.

R

Former student Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich’s book Eighth-Grade Superzero was an ILA Notable Book for a Global Society and an NCSS-CBC Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young Peoples in 2011.

S

Lion of the Sky: Haiku for All Seasons, written by former student Laura Purdie Salas, was an Parents Magazine Best Kids’ Books of 2019; Kirkus Best Picture Books of 2019; Horn Book‘s Top Ten Books for Summer Reading; NCTE Poetry Notables; and Center for Children’s Books Gryphon Honor Book in 2019.

Tanya Lee Stone’s 2009 book Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream won an NCTE Orbis Pictus Honor, Jane Addams Honor, YALSA Nonfiction Finalist, Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor, the Bank Street Flora Straus Steiglitz Award, and the Robert F. Sibert Medal!

T

In 2021, William Still and His Freedom Stories: The Father of the Underground Railroad by Don Tate won the SCBWI Golden Kite Award for Nonfiction Text for Younger Readers.

V

W

Laurie Wallmark’s 2017 book, Hedy Lamarr’s Double Life: Hollywood Legend and Brilliant Inventor, was a Eureka! Gold Winner, a Cook Prize Honor Winner, and Longlisted for AAAS/Subaru SB&F Award.

Willy Welch’s first book, Playing Right Field, began as a song that was recorded first by Peter, Paul & Mary.

Y

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