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 working with children’s book writers ever since. During the pandemic, I began using Zoom for one-to-one developmental critiques.

My writers come from all levels of the continuum, from beginner to advanced. Some writers sold the books they wrote and revised when we worked together — 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 writers published 135 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

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B

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

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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.

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Mockingbird

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

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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

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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.

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

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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