Ellen Hopkins is a New York Times best-selling and multi-award-winning author, a celebrated literary force whose courageous storytelling has enthralled readers like me for over two decades. She is perhaps best known for her raw and poignant novels written in verse. The real-life challenges of being a mother prompted the first of these, Crank, inspired by her now-recovered daughter’s struggles with an addiction to crystal methamphetamine and a consequent stint in prison.
Following the success of Crank, Hopkins has gone on to author more than a dozen acclaimed novels in unabashed verse. She has tackled subjects ranging from drugs to mental health to abuse to sex trafficking, and most recently, the foster care system in her new novel, Sync.
Longtime SCBWI member Joan Bransfield Graham is an award-winning children’s poet whose books include Splish Splash and Flicker Flash—shape poems about water and light (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Both books were School Library Journal Best Books of the Year and NCTE Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts, among many other honors. Her other published works include The Song We Chose to Sing (ACTA), a poetry/music CD, and The Poem That Will Not End: Fun with Poetic Forms and Voices (Amazon Children’s Publishing/Two Lions). She has also contributed to many poetry anthologies.
Joan took a moment to answer some questions for the Kite Tales Blog.
ANN ROUSSEAU SMITH: Congratulations on your newest book, Awesome Earth, illustrated by Tania García. You have written many poems in many poetic forms. Why concrete or shape poems for this new book?
JOAN BRANSFIELD GRAHAM: Thank you, Ann! Since I was going to be featuring landforms, shapes that grace our Earth, what better way to explain a shape than with shape itself—concrete poetry. Not only is the poem talking about the landform but also showing it. Awesome Earth combines poetry, science, and art to explore what creates landforms from “Mountain,” “Glacier,” and “Volcano” to “Island,” “Hills,” and “Hoodoos”—artistic wonders that cover our Earth’s surface. It’s a perfect book for STEAM, National Poetry Month, and Earth Day. Many teachers have told me that my poetry has proven helpful for their students who are acquiring English as it offers many clues to unlocking the words.
ARS: I love how poems in any form—concrete or other—create visual images for the reader or listener. Can you share any writing tips for the poet in all of us?
JBG: MY FIVE FAVORITE POETRY WRITING TIPS
1. Use all of your senses.
2. Use vigorous verbs, marvelous metaphors.
3. Each poem is a mini-story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. If your poem doesn’t have a payoff or new perspective at the end, maybe it’s upside down. Don’t give it away at the start.
4. Use details to reach the universal. Zoom in for a close-up or write a wide-angle, big picture poem.
5. Write the poem you’ve never read before.
ARS: Since Awesome Earth is a nonfiction book it contains back matter, including information on landforms, a glossary, and additional resources for readers. How involved are you with the back matter? Do you find all the information and references, or does the publisher assist?
JBG: I did all of the back matter myself, including the photos. Originally, the additional information was going to be sidebars, but the design team decided to use everything as back matter. It’s a challenging endeavor to take a huge amount of research, distill it, and make it easy to understand. How do you introduce tectonic plate theory and continental drift to a four- to eight-year-old? My books always have a much wider age range than what is listed. In ice-skating, doing jumps and twirls can look so effortless because the skaters have put a lot of work into it. The same goes for writing. Speaking of age range, landforms are studied in all grades, just in different ways. Once a woman said to me, “I don’t know who is having more fun with this book (Flicker Flash)—my six-year-old grandson or his father, who is a physicist!” It’s wonderful to get a response like that!
ARS: You are a longtime member of the SCBWI and a volunteer board member of the Central-Coastal California (CenCal) Region. How helpful has your involvement with the organization been to your writing and publishing career?
JBG: When we first moved to California, I was at the local library one day reading a copy of The Writer magazine, where I saw an ad for the SCBW (it didn’t have the “I” yet) Summer Conference in Santa Monica. Where is Santa Monica? I thought it wasn’t too far away, decided to attend, and have been going ever since. I’ve made lifelong friends, heard amazing writers, artists, editors, and agents speak and share their knowledge of both craft and the business side of publishing, learned a great deal, and had an incredible opportunity to meet a wealth of creative, amazing people, and so I have been a volunteer forever—I am so grateful I joined! Thanks to you, Ann, for your volunteer work, for helping to share happy news and keep us all connected!
Thank you, Joan, for all your thoughtful responses!
For more information about Joan and her books visit her childrensauthorsnetwork! website. Join her on Facebook.
For information on SCBWI-CenCal events (open to all SCBWI members!), go to scbwi.org/regions/cencal.
For more fantastic content, community, events, and other professional development opportunities, become a member today! Not sure if there is a chapter in your area? Check here.
Images provided by Joan Bransfield Graham and the SCBWI Central-Coastal Region
Author Harshini Vankineni with the proof copy of her debut, What Color is the Baby?
Harshini Vankineni is a writer and an immigrant from India and lives in Southern California with her husband and children. Her debut picture book, What Color is the Baby?, is set for release on April 1, 2025. Harshini writes picture books, young adult fantasy, and new adult romance. She likes to write complex characters who are often dealing with societal pressures head-on and to tell stories that are a lens to her culture.
Judy Y Faulkner: Welcome to Kite Tales, Harshini! Tell us a bit more about your history. Have you always been a writer?
Harshini Vankineni: Thank you, Judy. I think I’m a specimen of what middle-class Indian kids are brought up to be—despite many dreams and talents, you end up becoming a computer engineer or a doctor because of parental and societal pressures. I’m a graduate of Software Engineering. I came to the USA, or should I say was sent to the USA, to pursue a master’s in Computer Engineering. But I have been writing since the day I read an abridged version of The Tempest (with pictures and everything). My first manuscript was a really messy tale inspired by Johanna Spyri’s Heidi. I was twelve then, and boy, did I plagiarize. I wrote it in an expired, dated journal that an uncle gifted me, and my mother preserved it until I burned it. Because in that, the villain was my mother.
As the 2025 mentorship contest deadline approaches, SCBWI-L.A.’s Contest Coordinator checks in with a few past winners who’ve gone on to score major successes…
by Brenda Scott Royce
2020 Mentee Edward Underhill’s adult debut is in bookstores now
A few months ago, I was perusing the new release display in my local bookshop when a title called The In-Between Bookstore caught my eye. (I’m a sucker for any book about books, libraries, or bookstores!) I stared at the author’s name for a few moments before it struck me why it seemed so familiar—Edward Underhill won SCBWI-L.A.’s mentorship contest in 2020. The manuscript he worked on with mentor Nicole Maggi, Always the Almost, was published in 2023 by Wednesday Books, an imprint of Macmillan. Ed summarized the mentorship for Kite Tales in 2021, concluding: “Nicole’s mentorship gave me gifts I didn’t even know I needed, and I would not have gotten here without it.”
The In-Between Bookstore is Ed’s adult debut, and it’s garnering rave reviews (and a cover blurb by mega-bestseller Jodi Picoult!). Seeing it on the bookshelves made me wonder about other past mentorship contest winners. How many are enjoying similar achievements—and did their mentorship experience contribute to their success? I reached out to a few to find out.
SCBWI members’ publishing news is something to celebrate here at Kite Tales! Check out whose book is coming to a platform near you or around the world. Horn-tooting and digital high fives welcome in the comments!
wayfinding | ˈwāˌfīndiNG | noun the process or activity of ascertaining one’s position and planning and following a route
No single blog post can put us firmly on our individual career paths, but this week’s post can help us discover our routes by putting us in closer touch with folks who will help us shape them. These colleagues, teachers, and friends are the members of our own SCBWI community. For those new to the organization or the area, and for those who haven’t fully delved into the new website or aren’t yet familiar with the Kite Tales blog, here’s some 2025 wayfinding to help you get where you want.
“Ask an Editor” is a forum wherein SCBWI members submit questions that are answered quarterly as part of our Kite Tales blog.
Hi Christine – I’ve been trying to land an agent for four years, but have had no success. Should I self-publish my book?
– Hana, Culver City
Hello Hana – It typically takes 3–5 years from when a manuscript is polished and querying begins until an author lands an agent or publisher, and there is no guarantee a manuscript will get picked up. I understand that’s a long time to wait on a chance.
I hope you all ended up on the nice list and took some time to rest and reflect before diving into goals for a new year. Have you made a list of resolutions?
I’ve always been quite a fan of lists. They hold so much promise. To-do lists, goal lists, recipe lists, gift lists, idea lists, bucket lists, reading lists—the list goes on. While I must admit that I’ve been known to transfer the unchecked items off any given list to its next incarnation (sometimes indefinitely), the simple practice of writing them can spark growth and creativity.
In the spirit of new ideas for the new year, here are four fun list-making exercises that may jump-start your creative streak in 2025:
It’s been a roller coaster of a year. But that means there’ve been ups as well as downs. Joy, growth, progress, breakthroughs, satisfaction. So, take a moment to peruse our traditional year-end inspirational quotes column, which this year includes a baker’s dozen. We need ’em! And we have them, thanks to all of you who have been kind enough to share your time, expertise, images, thoughts, words—and reasons for huzzahs—with all of us through Kite Tales. Now, let’s hop in the time machine together and take a look back at some of the highlights.
When I saw last year’s call for SCBWI mentors, I was instantly motivated to apply. I credit the SCBWI with my first successes as an illustrator, and I miss teaching and mentoring college students (something I did for several years before going back to full-time freelance work). It seemed like an exciting opportunity to share some of the knowledge I’ve learned along the way and to give back to the organization.
Mentee Kristin Marine and her mentor, Jaime Zollars, express a shared love for books at the CenCal 2024 Writers and Illustrators Day
Kite Tales 