Category: Uncategorized
Middle Grade Ninja: Book Review: TIGER, TIGER by Lynne Reid Banks
First Paragraph: THE TWO TIGER CUBS, romping in the jungle undergrowth near their den, prick up their ears. Lynne Reid Banks will be here Thursday to face the 7 Questions. Esteemed Reader, it’s been amazing how regularly we’ve been able to have the Ninja’s childhood heroes appear at this blog, and this week is a very […]
Middle Grade Ninja: Book Review: WRITING CHILDREN’S BOOKS FOR DUMMIES by Lisa Rojany Buccieri and Peter Economy
First Paragraph: For many, dreams of writing or illustrating a children’s book remain just that—dreams—because they soon find out that writing a really good children’s book is hard. Not only that, but actually getting a children’s book published is even harder. If you don’t know the conventions and styles, if you don’t speak the lingo, […]
Middle Grade Ninja: Guest Post: “Adapting my Screenplay to a Middle Grade Novel” by Fred Holmes
Let me start off by telling you about my novel: THE UGLY TEAPOT is the story of a fourteen-year-old girl who loved her father so much that she worried about him constantly. After all, he was a photographer who traveled to the most dangerous places in the world. To allay her fears, each time he […]
Middle Grade Ninja: GUEST POST: “How to Create a Teacher’s Guide for Your Middle Grade Novel” by Melody J. Bremen
A great way to make your middle grade novel accessible for classroom use is to create a downloadable teacher’s guide. You can easily put this together in a Word doc and save it as a PDF. Look for inspiration: The first thing you want to do is look at guides for other novels to get […]
Middle Grade Ninja: GUEST POST: “On Boogers and Barf” by Cara Bartek
I am good at a lot of things. Okay, maybe I think I am good at a lot of things. Inflated ego aside, being a writer means that I need to be good at one thing: communicating. And in the most eloquent words I can muster … good communication ain’t easy! My goal as a […]
Middle Grade Ninja: GUEST POST: “Stepping into the Past (Researching and Writing Middle Grade Historical Fiction )” by Yona McDonough
Even as a kid, I loved stories set in the past (Anne of Green Gables, A Little Princess and A Tree Grow in Brooklyn were all favorites) and when I grew up to become a children’s book author, I gravitated naturally to creating historical fiction set in long-ago times. So when I was tapped by […]
Middle Grade Ninja: GUEST POST: “Writing Tricky Topics for the Middle Grade Reader” by Martii Maclean
As young readers, we’ve all read stories that showed us glimpses of the injustice or frightening realisations about our world. We traveled with the book’s character and experienced what it was like to face a bully or be frightened by a stranger, or to struggle with secrets, doubts, disfigurement, seeing a cruelty or injustice, and […]
Middle Grade Ninja: Book of the Week
WARNING: This week’s book is actually edgy YA and it is filled with adult content. It is absolutely not appropriate for younger readers and adults should view it as the equivalent of an ‘R’ rated movie. First Paragraph(s): Pick me. It’s all I can do not to scream. I dig my nails into the marula oak […]
Middle Grade Ninja: Marketing for Authors
Josh Redlich is a Publicist for Random House Children’s Books, where he works with authors like Mary Pope Osborne, Louis Sachar, Jay Kristoff, Gennifer Choldenko and Marisha Pessl to promote their works. He formerly worked at Sterling Publishing on titles ranging from children’s picture books to adult nonfiction. Josh is also the Chair of the […]
Middle Grade Ninja: Tomi Adeyemi
Tomi Adeyemi is a Nigerian-American writer and creative writing coach based in San Diego, California. After graduating Harvard University with an honors degree in English literature, she received a fellowship that allowed her to study West African mythology and culture in Salvador, Brazil. When she’s not working on her novels or watching Scandal, she can […]