Hop, Skip and a Blog!

Ideas are a lot like opportunities. You never know when one is going to pop up right under your nose. So when my writing friend and awesome author of Deck the Halls, Erin Dealey, tagged me for the Children’s Blog Hop, I was delighted to run with it—with a hop, skip, and a blog!   

So here goes!

What are you working on right now?

In addition to book signing events for my latest release Cowpoke Clyde & Dirty Dawg (Clarion 2013), I’ve been wrangling with a new picture book manuscript about a princess. I know! There are lots of picture books about princesses out there already, but I like princesses (who doesn’t?) and I always have fun figuring out where I’m going and seeing where an idea will take me.   

How does this differ from other works in the genre?

Good question—especially since there are a lot of princess books out there. Right now, I’m including an unexpected character that will take the book in a new, and hopefully unexpected direction.

Why do you write what you write?

When I choose to work on a project, it’s because I’m excited about telling the story whether it’s a nonfiction subject, or a fun, rambunctious picture book story. When I’m writing nonfiction, such as my books about the French scientist who proved the earth turned, or exploring the lives of honey bees, I’m excited to find those fascinating bits of information and share them with young readers. When I’m writing fiction, it’s fun to jump into the thick of a story and see what will happen. I particularly enjoyed writing my latest picture book release Cowpoke Clyde & Dirty Dawg about a cowpoke, who completed his chores, but found one thing he’d plum forgot—his dirty dawg. When I started writing it, I had no idea how it would end.

What is the hardest thing about writing?

The hardest thing about writing is also the best thing about writing—grabbing onto a wisp of an idea, facing a blank screen, and breathing life into an idea word by word. As my fingers tap, tap, tap across the keyboard I’m alternately thrilled by my discoveries and stricken with the thought that maybe this time, I won’t get over the assorted roadblocks and finally find my way. But I keep at it, day after day. Then, to my delight, after latching onto a goal like a dog on a rope, I get through to the other side.  Amazing!

And now without further hops, skips, or jumps, it’s my pleasure to introduce the next three Children’s Blog Hoppers:

Gayle Kraus –  My wonderful writing friend, Gayle C. Krause is a member of SCBWI, The Poets’ Garage and The Cliffhouse Wonderwriters. She writes across the genres including poetry, picture books and MG/YA novels. She has been published in various children’s magazines (Highlights, Boy’s Quest, Hopscotch for Girls etc…) and poetry anthologies – And the Crowd Goes Wild (Friesen Press 2012) and Meanderings: A Collection of Poetic Verse (Diversion Press (2009). Her first picture book, a seasonal rhymer, Rock Star Santa was a Scholastic Book Club original in 2008, and is featured in the Firefly and See Saw flyers every November and December. Look for it in an elementary classroom flyer near you this year. Her YA novel, RATGIRL: Song of the Viper was published in February 2013 (Noble Young Adult) and the book trailer can be viewed at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRrVuYxmVFw. During the course of her writing career Ms. Krause has served as assistant editor for Underneath the Juniper Tree, a dark fantasy online magazine developed for young teens and a children’s book reviewer for Children’s Literature.com. You can learn more about Gayle at (www.gayleckrause.com).

Linda Joy Singleton – This terrific writing friend is the author of over 35 books for kids, including YALSA honored THE SEER series (my favorite!) and DEAD GIRL WALKING trilogy. She submitted short stories to magazines when she was fourteen and finished her first book during a two-week holiday. She kept stories she wrote as a kid, and loves to share them at school presentations. I love her books and can’t wait for more in THE SEER series and to see her upcoming picture book release. To learn more about Linda and her wonderful titles, visit her website at: http://www.lindajoysingleton.com.

Brenda Reeves Sturgis is the author of the popular 10 Turkeys in the Road, Amazon/and Scholastic, 2011. Booklist praised it saying, “Colorful cartoonlike acrylic illustrations—contrasting happy-faced, googly-eyed turkeys with the increasingly exasperated farmer—capture the chaos with liveliness and humor. Kids will enjoy counting turkeys and finding corresponding numerals incorporated within the pictures. Not just for Thanksgiving. She has two forthcoming books, No Fun in the Sun for Santa, First Ideas Corp (2013), and upcoming The Lake Where Loon Lives, (2014) with Islandport Press. To learn more about Brenda and her  books, visit her website at: http://www.brendareevessturgis.com/Home.html.

Agency Quest

By the end of 2012, I had a respectable amount of trade and educational titles under my belt, and it was time to find an agent who represented what I wrote—picture books. Anyone who has ever tried finding an agent, much less a picture book agent, knows it can be a daunting task. Out of the hundreds of agencies out there, only a fraction represents children’s literature and out of those, a smaller fraction represents picture books. Although I’d sold some trade picture books myself, some doors were perpetually closed unless I attended a conference where the editor spoke.  That worked to a point, but it wasn’t a good strategy in the long run.

So, I began my search. I started by studying SCBWI’s agent list and supplemented it with Casey McCormick’s and Natalie Aguirre’s blog www.literaryrambles.com that I’d read about on a listserv. Finding their blog was like finding a treasure trove of information that I didn’t even know existed. Links in the upper left hand corner separated agents based on genre, and even if a particular agent wasn’t a good fit, there was usually a link to the agency’s website where I could do further research on other agents.  Query Tracker at http://www.querytracker.net/QueryTracker was another great source of agent information. As I delved into the research, I saw that no one list had all the information. So, after a couple of days of searching online, I cobbled my own list that I’ve included below with links to their websites. About half them represent only children’s literature. The other half has at least one agent that represents picture books and other children’s literature. A few of them were closed to picture book submissions currently, but I included them as agencies to watch in the future.   

The good news? After a thorough evaluation, submission, and discussion process, . . . I'm delighted to be represented by Eden Street, LLC.  I hope my search helps your own picture book agency quest. 

1.     Adams Literary

2.     Andrea Brown

3.     Barry Goldblatt Literary

4.     Bent Agency

5.     Betsy Amster Literary

6.     Bookstop Literary

7.     Bradford Literary

8.     The Chudney Agency

9.     Curtis Brown

10. D4EO

11. Dunham Literary

12. Dystel & Goderich Literary

13. East/West Agency

14. Eden Street LLC

15. Erin Murphy Literary

16. Ethan Ellenberg Literary

17. Farber Literary (no website, but worth researching)

18. Flannery Literary

19. Folio Management

20. Foundry Literary

21. Full Circle Literary

22. Greenhouse Literary

23. Hen & Ink

24. Herman Agency

25. Inkwell Management

26. Jean V. Naggar Literary

27. Jennifer de Chiara Literary

28. Kirchoff/Wohlberg

29. Laurens R. Schwartz (no website, worth researching)

30. Liza Dawson & Associates

31. Liza Royce Agency

32. Mansion Street

33. Marie Brown Associates (no website, but worth researching)

34. Marsal Lyon

35. McVeigh Agency (no website, but worth researching)

36. Muse Literary

37. Nancy Gallt Literary

38. Pippin Properties

39. Prospect Agency

40. Red Fox Literary

41. Rodeen Literary

42. Sanford J. Greenburger Associates

43. Scovil Galen Literary Agency

44. Serendipity Literary

45. Sheldon Fogelman Agency

46. Stimola Literary

47. Upstart Crow Literary

48. Wernick Pratt

49. Writer’s House

The Next Big Thing!

The Next Big Thing is here! 

What is it? It’s a terrific blog event that shines a spotlight on authors’ upcoming book releases. The event was originally launched in Australia and is now spreading around the world. I received my tag from children’s author and app wizard, Chris Pederson, and at the end of my interview, I’ll tag several other writers who’ll share what their Next Big Thing when they blog next week.

Here's my interview about my Next Big Thing:

Written by Lori Mortensen, Illustrated by Michael Allen Austin

What is the title of your next book?

Cowpoke Clyde & Dirty Dawg.

What genre is this book?

It’s a rhyming picture book.

Who is publishing this book?

It’s being released by Clarion on May 14, 2013, a few short months away.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

One day I was looking for an idea for a picture book and thought it would be fun to write a story about a boy chasing his dog for a bath. However, as I worked on it, there was no magic. No matter what I wrote, the story felt flat and boring. After setting it aside for a while, I happened to notice a few picture books with cowboys and suddenly knew that if I switched the setting to a cowboy setting, all sorts of exciting things could happen. Once I made the switch, the story took off like a buckin’ bronco and it was exciting to figure out what would happen next.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Washin’ a dog can lead to a powerful lot of trouble. 

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Once I switched the story to the cowboy setting, only a couple of weeks. When the editor at Clarion bought it, it took a few more months to tweak the text so it was pitch-perfect.   

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Since the story is a rambunctious read-aloud, the actor would have to have a lot of pluck too. I could easily see Jim Carey, Tom Hanks, or Tommy Lee Jones as the dogged cowboy. And the dog? Beethoven, of course!

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

There are some terrific cowboy picture books out there. Two that come to mind are The Dirty Cowboy by Amy Timberlake and When Wishes Were Horses by Sharon Hart Addy.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My neighbors used to have dogs that regularly broke out of their backyard and raced down the street which always created an exciting scene of shouting and barking, so that was probably the initial inspiration of what I thought could become an exciting story.  

What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?

I think this excerpt from the book description says it perfectly!

“The rhyming stanzas are pitch-perfect, Texas-style, and plumb near cry out to be read aloud. Austin’s expressive acrylic and colored-pencil caricatures of Cowpoke Clyde and his menagerie are priceless. A storytime shoo-in!”

Michael Allen Austin and I have also put together a wonderful multi-page guide for teachers and librarians to use with the book that will be available through our websites when the book is released.

I’m now delighted to pass The Next Best Thing blog to the following terrific authors:

·        Judy Cox

·        Danna Smith

·        Jeri Ferris

Yee Hah!

Celebrate!

The end of the year is just around the corner. At first, it’s easy to think about all the stars I’m still shooting for, but when I take a moment and think of all the great things that happened in 2012, I realize there were many accomplishments to celebrate.

The year kicked off with the release of my rhyming picture book, Cindy Moo, illustrated by wonderful Jeff Mack. Not only did he do a great job of capturing Cindy Moo’s udderly moo-velous lunar journey, his imagery became a delightful feature of my redesigned website at www.lorimortensen.com, the next notable accomplishment of the year. After putting together my own website for the past five years, I realized it was time to turn this important task over to an expert. After much searching, I found Donna Farrell at www.donnadoodles.com, who gave my website a much needed make-over. I’m tickled with the result.

Next, was the creation of three book trailers, two as a collaboration between my son and me, and one by yours truly. I’m so pleased that we tackled this fun project and learned so much along the way. Now that I’m a YouTube aficionado, I’m always tickled when someone goes to my links, likes them, and adds a positive comment. (Wouldyou? Wouldyou? :-) 

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTe70Qs0PLE,
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9UGmIRHXZ4,
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeTf2oQuwbo

This year was also a year of SCBWI presentations, and book signing events at Barnes & Noble in Citrus Heights, and Face in a Book, in El Dorado Hills. I was thrilled to share my writing journey with so many others who also share my passion for writing for children and read Cindy Moo to eager listeners. (http://lorimortensen.com/Events.html)  

The most exciting news of 2012, however, was the sale of my rhyming picture book Mousequerade Ball to Bloomsbury. Talks are in the works for an illustrator, so I’ll post more news as details fall into place.

On a personal note, I’m terribly pleased that I’ve stuck to my WeightWatcher plan and kept off the 34 pounds I dropped in 2011. Such a difference! And I’m loving all the fruits and vegetables I’d neglected for so long.

So that’s 2012. All in all, a great year. Here’s to the wonders and surprises of 2013, including my new rhyming picture book release Cowpoke Clyde & Dirty Dawg with Clarion. More news on that next year!

My Book Trailer Education

Over the past two months, I’ve made three book trailers. As I worked on each one, I learned new skills and sorted out what I’d do differently the next time around. Technology was at my fingertips and as an author I knew I wanted to use book trailers to promote my trade book titles around the world through YouTube and my website. I knew nothing at the outset except the many times I’d drooled over my fellow writers’ book trailers such as Linda Lodding’s The Busy Life of Ernestine Buckmeister, Danna Smith’s Pirate Nap, and Bethanie Murguia’s Zoe Gets Ready. If you’re interested in making book trailers, then come along. Hopefully, my experience will pave the way for your book trailer journey.

Storyboard Text

I began by figuring out what I wanted to say by making a document in Word and inserting text boxes on the right side to create a preliminary storyboard. I had to remember that I didn’t want my book trailer to replace the book. It had to grab the viewer’s attention, create questions, and encourage the viewer to purchase the book to discover the whole story. Each text box contained what I planned to use with a single image.I kept my text short and to the point and realized extra details would only be found in the book.

Storyboard Images

Once I had the text, I figured out what images to use to support it. Just like the text, I didn’t want to give the imagery of the book away. I tried to stick with key images in my books’ openings and portions of images that appeared later.

Selecting and preparing the images in PhotoShop took a lot of time. Images had to be scanned, cropped, and edited. This was particularly true with my trailers for Cindy Moo and In the Trees, Honey Bees! In these cases, my twenty-one-year-old son who’d taken animation classes for his major, had to isolate parts of images so they could be manipulated separately from the background. For example, in the opening of In the Trees, Honey Bees! the cover appears. Seconds later, the yellow title flies away, then the bylines, then the bee. Each movement was a separate image that had to be removed from the book cover image and applied in layers. Many images had to be edited to remove dark vertical gutter lines. Text had to be removed so I could use my book trailer text.

I’ve included the honey bee trailer here:

Once we finished  the images, I inserted them next to my text boxes and my storyboard began to take shape. The storyboard became the road map for my project. The clearer the road map, the easier the project became. This was especially true when working with someone else, in this case, my son. The first time around, I wasn’t nearly as clear about what I wanted and we spent days changing things on the computer screen instead of figuring it all out on paper first. Not a good idea. The second time around, we knew better.

Animation

Once I had the images next to my text boxes, the next step was to figure out what I wanted to happen.So many choices! I tried to make choices that supported the type of book it was. For example, for my bee book, the text flew off like a bee. For Cindy Moo I stuck with jumping imagery.

Here is my book trailer for Cindy Moo:

I had more options when my son was working on my book trailers. He had more complex software (Flash), a better scanner, and illustration devices that I didn’t have. He could make separate images move around the screen, which was a terrific option. The drawback was that when we’d officially finish a book trailer, I’d want to go back and change something to make it even better. This happened over and over and it became the neverending book trailer. I was as picky about my book trailers as I was about each word of my books and it was frustrating to rely on someone else’s interest and availability. The only answer was to find a way I could make them myself so I could change whatever I liked with impunity!  

Windows Movie Maker

I decided to use Window Movie Maker on my last book trailer for my picture book biography Come See the Earth Turn: The Story of Leon Foucault. It didn’t have all the bells and whistles of Flash, but it was on my computer and there wouldn’t be as huge of a learning curve as there would have been trying to figure out Flash which took my son a whole semester to master.

As I had with my other book trailers, I created a storyboard before I began. When my storyboard was in place I was ready to drop my images into WMM and create my movie.

When I clicked on an image, it had certain options. First, how long did I want each image to appear? Next, how did I want to transition from one image to the next? Although there were many options, I liked cross-fading and selected that for all of my images. There were also many animation options—how I wanted images to come and go. As I held my cursor over each option, it demonstrated the effect. I selected a variety of animation effects throughout the movie trailer to create drama and interest.

It was a good time to double check that each image was exactly the way I wanted it to be. Was each image cropped to its best advantage? Was the focus of interest of each image used to its fullest potential? For example, in my Come See the Earth Turn trailer, there’s an image of Leon’s silhouette in a window of a darkened city street. The first time around, I’d concentrated on the cityscape instead of his image. Later on, I realized his image was the key to the scene, so I went back and enlarged and recropped the image to return to focus to the mysterious man in the window.

Captions

Once the images were in place, it was time to think about captions, an option on the home page of WWM. I needed to decide what font I wanted to use along with its color and size. For this book trailer, I selected a font that went with the historic nature of the book and enlarged it.

Placement was important too. Where would the text appear so the viewer could see it clearly against the image? There were also many options about how the text would come and go.

How long the text appeared was an important factor too. When I worked on the captions, I tried to have them appear in a reasonable amount of time to read, but discovered much later that I needed to allow double the time. As I learned from writing friend and techno app genius Chris Pederson, people who haven’t spent hours scouring over my book trailer are actually looking at the pictures at first. By the time they’d looked at the pictures, my captions had vanished. I ended up going back and doubling the times I’d allowed for scenes and captions which meant going back and redoing the sound track as well. Best to catch that mistake before the sound track is made and it's posted at YouTube. (I won't make that mistake again!) Other things to check are:

·    Typos and punctuation (Of course—but you’d be surprised what gets through!)

·    Line widows (Is there a word dangling on a line all by itself?)

·    Are the captions in a pleasing alignment with the images? For example, I’d placed my captions on an image and thought it was great. Later, I went back and saw how the caption had crossed out of the frame of the image onto the black margin of the scene. Did I want that? I decided I didn’t and changed it.

Sound

Sound was a fun and interesting challenge. I didn’t have a big budget for my movie, so I spent time looking around for royalty-free music and sound effects. I discovered that Kevin MacLeod has a wonderful site and used his music for all of my book trailers. Freesound.org is a great place to find all kinds of sound effects.

What was surprising and discouraging was discovering that WMM only allows one sound track for a movie—yikes! As simple as my project was, I needed more than that. After tons of research online, the answer was Audacity, a free, downloadable sound editing software. It was confusing at first, but then I found a demonstration at YouTube and all the pieces fell into place. When he explained it, it was so simple! Open a sound file. Select and export a section as a new file. Then import it back, and edit as necessary such as fading out the end. As I imported new sound files, I was building a sound track with multiple layers.

I started by knowing the length of my movie. Then I imported my musical soundtrack and cut it to match the length of my movie along with a fade out at the end.

Once my music sound track was selected, I decided what sound effects I wanted with the images. I wrote down the time in the movie they started and stopped and cut my sound tracks accordingly. When it was all done, I exported the multiple tracks as a single file and uploaded it my movie in WWM.

And that was my book trailer education.

Here is my latest picture book trailer:

Whew!

A Buzzing New Book Trailer

Bees and book trailers—two of my favorite subjects! Today I’m thrilled to showcase the melding of both in my new picture book trailer, “In the Trees, Honey Bees! – A Picture Book Trailer” featuring my rhyming, nonfiction picture book published by Dawn Publications in 2009.

I wrote In the Trees, Honey Bees because of my late beekeeper father-in-law, Eugene Mortensen. Whenever I visited his home in Tracy, California, he was always doing something with his honey bees—he had over 300 hives! If he wasn’t scraping the wax off stacks of wooden frames, he’d be moving hives from one field to another, “extracting” honey in his garage, or going out on calls to catch menacing swarms. One day, my husband and I jumped in his bee truck with him and watched as he captured a buzzing clump of bees that had swarmed on the front gate of the Altamont Raceway.

Honey bees were so fascinating, I decided to do a little research even though I figured I knew all of the bee basics—bees gathered pollen and nectar, performed a mysterious dance, and made honey, right? To my surprise, I discovered honey bees were more fascinating than I ever imagined. For example, who knew that bees did different chores as they matured in the hive? I didn’t. Who knew that bees gathered water and tree sap in addition to the familiar nectar and pollen? I didn’t. Who knew that honey bees used tree sap to seal cracks in their hive? I didn’t. And I was sure most people didn’t know either even though there were lots of books about honeybees on the shelves.

So I wrote something for children in rhyme that would capture the fascinating facets of these familiar insects in a new way. I coupled each rhyme with more complex text when I realized the rhyming text couldn’t say everything I wanted to say. I felt as if I was opening a window to a world most people didn’t even know was there. (The picture above is one I took at my friend's bee hives. It also appears in the back of the book.)

Today, my book trailer opens another window into this book, and the fascinating life of wild honey bees.

If you have a moment, take a look, “like it,” and add a comment.

Let's spread the buzz! :-)

People, Places, and a Virtual Book Tour with Nancy I. Sanders

HOOKED ON BIOGRAPHIES

I’ve always loved biographies. When I was young, I spent countless hours at the library scouring the aisles for just the right books. Biographies were a favorite because I loved being drawn into another person’s world. I remember struggling through a dark, silent world with Helen Keller, traveling the globe with Life photographer Margaret Bourke-White, and learning about mysterious cultures with anthropologist Margaret Mead.

Years later when I began writing for children, I wanted to write the same sort of biographies that thrilled me as a child. Biographies filled with illuminating tidbits of information that revealed what made someone else’s life different or similar to my own. Over the years, I’ve written about many fascinating people, from determined basketball ball legend Steve Nash to imaginative Pokémon creator, Satoshi Tajiri. I’ve written about scientist Doris Taylor, who grew a beating heart, and important people in American history such as Harriet Tubman, Thomas Edison, and Marie Curie. As I researched each one, I discovered wonderful details about their lives and their indomitable spirit that made me want to shake someone’s shoulder and say, “Did you know this?”

What are a few? Thomas Edison was such a notable inventor that on the night of his funeral, Americans turned off their lights at ten p.m. for one minute to honor the great inventor.  Amelia Earhart’s independent spirit was reflected in an entry made in her yearbook that said, “Amelia Earhart—to the girl in brown who walks alone.” Marie Curie unknowingly exposed herself to so much radiation during her research, her notebooks are still radioactive today. Of all my biographies, I’m most pleased with Come See the Earth Turn: The Story of Léon Foucault published by Tricycle/Random House in 2010, about the unassuming French scientist who proved the earth turned when others with more degrees and honors had failed for centuries.

ON TOUR WITH NANCY I. SANDERS

Because I love biographies, I’m especially delighted to welcome author Nancy I. Sanders to my blog today, one stop on her two-week virtual book tour for her super new release, Frederick Douglass for Kids: His Life and Times with 21 Activities.

Few Americans have had as much impact on this nation as Frederick Douglass. Born on a plantation, he later escaped slavery and helped others to freedom via the Underground Railroad. In time he became a bestselling author, an outspoken newspaper editor, a brilliant orator, a tireless abolitionist, and a brave civil rights leader. He was famous on both sides of the Atlantic in the years leading up to the Civil War, and when war broke out, Abraham Lincoln invited him to the White House for counsel and advice.

Frederick Douglass for Kids follows the footsteps of this American hero, from his birth into slavery to his becoming a friend and confidant of presidents and the leading African American of his day. And to better appreciate Frederick Douglass and his times, readers will form a debating club, cook a meal similar to the one Douglass shared with John Brown, make a civil war haversack, participate in a microlending program, and more. This valuable resource also includes a time line of significant events, a list of historic sites to visit or explore online, and web resources for further study.

Nancy I. Sanders is the bestselling and award-winning author of over 80 books including the well-loved homeschooling curriculum to teach kids how to write, WriteShop Primary (Grades K-2) and WriteShop Junior (Grades 3-5). She teaches other writers how to launch their career to the next level based on material found in her groundbreaking book for writers, Yes! You Can Learn How to Write Children’s Books, Get Them Published, and Build a Successful Writing Career. Nancy and her husband, Jeff, live in southern California.

Interview with Nancy i. sanders

What was a highlight of writing this book?

The highlight was definitely being able to take a 2-week photo-research tour to follow in the footsteps of Frederick Douglass from his birth to his death. Before I started writing the book, my husband and adult son and I toured through the Eastern Shores of Maryland, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, New Bedford, and Boston, snapping tons of photographs of historic sites and gaining a deeper understanding of Frederick Douglass, his life and his times. Not only was I able to get some great photographs to put in my book that have never before been published in a book about this great man, but it was a deeply moving experience of a lifetime. We did things such as stand on the street corner where the building was located when Frederick Douglass was hidden on the Underground Railroad as he escaped from slavery…to driving along the parade route he marched along in Philadelphia when he was reunited as a famous man with the descendants of his former owners. It was an amazing experience!

Was there something you learned about Frederick Douglass that impacted your life?

Yes. I learned that Frederick Douglass truly loved his fellow man. He had a generous heart and gave up comfort and safety for himself and his family to devote his life to the cause of helping others. He saw himself as equal with everyone, whether black or white, whether man or woman, and he dedicated his life to helping bring equal rights to our nation and to the world.

What else did you learn about Frederick Douglass while writing this book?

As other biographies of Douglass have shared, this great man had many influential white friends such as William Lloyd Garrison, and many leading women friends such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I include these in my book, too.

What I discovered through reading Douglass’s autobiographies, however, (and which many biographers don’t mention) is that Frederick Douglass was also friends with nearly every African American leader of his day. He published their speeches and articles in his newspapers. He attended their churches and conventions. He traveled and spoke with these important leaders, and entertained many in his home. He worked together with them to help fugitive slaves escape to freedom along the Underground Railroad.

In Frederick Douglass for Kids, I include short biographies and photographs of many of these black leaders who were friends and associates of Douglass. On my book’s website, I also include a list of names of many famous black abolitionists with links to learn more about these great and influential men and women who lived during the years leading up to the Civil War. This list is especially helpful for anyone studying America’s history as well as students writing reports for school. It can be accessed at: www.frederickdouglass.wordpress.com/black-abolitionists/

What are you doing to celebrate the release of your book, Frederick Douglass for Kids?

I’m hosting a two-week virtual Book Launch Party on my blog! Each day I’ve been showcasing photos I took when I traveled back to the East Coast and sharing a bit of the behind-the-scenes journey of writing this book and learning more about Frederick Douglass.

There are prizes to win, fun facts to learn, and lots of inside peeks and helpful tips about how a book is born. Stop by my site today to join in the party and a chance to win a set of full-color autographed bookmarks of the book at:

http://nancyisanders.wordpress.com/2012/06/07/book-launch-party-frederick-douglass-for-kids-4/

For more information visit Nancy at: www.nancyisanders.com,  www.FrederickDouglass.wordpress.com. Purchase the book at: http://tinyurl.com/7opjcn4.

Thanks for stopping by, Nancy!