Week One Day Two!

*One Of Marty Kelley's impressive children's book in which he was the author and illustrator for. ( Like all of his work!)*

Today was the second day of Patty’s and mine senior project of writing and illustrating a children’s book. We met with Deb early this morning at 8 o’clock, and headed on our way to New Boston, NH where we met with Marty Kelley! He was so awesome! He is a local author and illustrator of children’s books in New Hampshire. Marty is extremely talented, as he not only comes up with his own story lines, but also illustrates his own books.  Marty literally blew me away with his talent. He showed us his four books out right now. Three of his novels are centered around different seasons, (ex: Fall, Winter and Summer) and one is revolved around a list of terrible childhood traumas, (ex: dropping your ice cream cone, or going to the dentists.) Marty rhymes in most of his books, and preached to Patty how difficult it will be to rhyme our book. He reminded us that completing a rhyming book is completely possible, but we need to make sure our words do not seem forced, and that they will have an even flow when reading them out loud. Marty also stressed that our storyline needs to remain simple, as we are dealing with an adolescent age group. Patty and I desperately need to remember that we are using our story to get an underlying message across to a young reader, and we need to be subtle with our point that we are trying to make throughout our story, and not preach our lesson to the children. When Marty commented on the illustration processes of his stories, he mentioned that his illustrations are imagined in his head after he is done writing down his story. One main reason it happens this way is because when a story is finished, one has to see how the story would take place in a real life setting. One has to see the perspective of each page, as Marty told us that perspective of each page of the book is the most important part of this whole process. The perspective needs to be constantly changing from picture to picture, or the child becomes bored with the images, thus not being interested in the story. Marty also noted that the illustrations for many of his books could take from 3 weeks to 3 years to complete fully and submit to a publishing house, (unless, of course he is on a time constraint.) Patty and I also talked to Marty about the whole process of submitting a story to a publishing house. I was highly interested in understanding the editing/publishing aspect of the project, as this is the topic I am mainly focused on. I asked Marty if he felt his stories from start to finish were completely different from one another. Marty told us that each story is of course edited and taken apart, for improvement purposes only. He feels that the editing of the stories is only to better improve the story, so each piece of criticism is only for the best! I feel that Marty had an unbelievable attitude towards this job and its entirety. The interview with Marty was a clear motivation for Patty and I as we take the beginning plunge into the writer’s world of children’s literature. Tomorrow Patty and I are going to sit in on Deb’s writing class! WAHOO! Until next time muggles!

Check out Marty Kelley's website! He's AMAZING!