Patience and perseverance are among the hardest things for children to learn. How can we make pressing on in the face of discouragement interesting to kids? By reading them amazing stories of creativity and resilience!
Where do successful nonfiction writers get their ideas? So many places! The topics a nonfiction writer can write about are limitless. Sure, some ideas have been written about before, but nonfiction writers take that as a challenge. They ask what unusual angle they might take or if there is a different (or better) format in which to deliver the information.… more
Miss Colfax's Light is a perfect example of the text and illustrations enhancing each other to make a picture book biography that is more than the sum of its parts. With our interview, we hope to help you look more deeply at Eileen Ryan Ewen's illustrations.
In this interview with Aimée Bissonette, author of Miss Colfax’s Light, our Bookstorm™ this month, we asked about writing and researching this nonfiction picture book biography.
Aimée, thank you for sharing your experiences and discoveries with our readers. We’re excited about this book that showcases an Everyday Hero, one of America’s female lighthouse keepers.… more
We are pleased to feature Miss Colfax’s Light as our June book selection, in which author Aimée Bissonette and illustrator Eileen Ryan Ewen tell the fascinating story of a woman who served as the Michigan City Lighthouse keeper from 1861 to 1904. Captains and navigators on Lake Michigan relied on her lighthouse to keep them from foundering on the rocks or crashing onto the shore in rough weather.… more