I briefly mentioned this in my mean girls post, but it’s time for a deep dive. Names are for more than just mean girls. Chapter books tend to be character driven. The majority of titles involve the main character’s name, even. In a world like this, character names can be the strongest tool in your […]
Pacing is the glue that holds chapter books together. You only have ~2000-10,000 words to get the job done, so you’d better move fast. Knowing when and how to move on is key. Let’s talk about how to get that done. Actually, let’s just look at a bunch of examples of how other writers get […]
So I guess chapter books are the prime age group for activity books as well, because there sure are a lot of them. An article-load amount of them. Let’s look at as many as we can, shall we? The Books (For all these activities shown, you can right-click on them and open in a new […]
So I’ve done this before, but last time we weren’t so chapter book focused. It seems almost every chapter book features a mean girl eventually. If you read that past article, you’ll know we’re here to classify mean girls by commonly seen character traits: Mean, popular, perfect, preppy, rich, snooty, and conceited. Occasionally bonus traits, […]
When writing for a specific age group, you want to be relatable. If you’re writing a chapter book series, you’re going to have to be relatable a lot. Can you cover ten topics? Twenty? Here’s a shortlist of fifteen common topics I’ve seen across different chapter books series. More importantly, we can see how each […]
Chapter books tend to be in series, but how much does that really matter? If a kid is expected to be able to pick up any book in a series and not be missing anything, what do you need to repeat? What can you reference without confusing a reader? And Princess Pulverizer is one of […]
There. I said it. It’s hard to talk about books when nobody’s on the same page. You think somebody would have unified format names by now. Different groups have different ideas. From publishers to stores to libraries to teachers and of course, kids. Things can’t help get a little muddied. But I can still complain […]
This is the first article I’ve been requested to write. Don’t let that make you think this topic isn’t exciting, because it super is exciting. I went off about it in a critique group and had to pull myself back from ranting for hours. This article isn’t hours long though. Don’t worry, I kept it […]
I have a soft spot for Mean Girls. Not just the 2004 Lindsay Lohan flick, the character archetype. There’s just something about characters who have a grudge against everything, or at least the main character, that fascinates me. Who hurt them? How did they become this kind of person? Why doesn’t every book I read […]
The Mousehold 