Archive May 18, 2023

UP! UP! UP! SKYSCRAPER

Writing a Small Poem

What’s the story? When my “building a house” small poem became the Raise the Roof picture book, I thought I was done with construction books, but my architect husband was working on a skyscraper and that made me curious! How did they make tall buildings stand up straight? (The Tower of Pisa is leaning to one side!)

This question led to more and with his expert advice, a new small poem became the picture book Up! Up! Up! Skyscraper! My clever editor wanted the last page of the book to fold up into a completed skyscraper, so the facts aren’t in the back after the poem like so many other books. In this book, the facts (and lots of labels) written in prose accompany the poem page by page.

I was so pleased when the California Reading Association gave this book a 2017 Eureka! Nonfiction Children’s Book Award. Then it made Amazon’s Children’s Architecture Books Top 100 list, so they filmed a preview video for it! That’s my SKYSCRAPER story.

Now it’s your turn! What is your SKYSCRAPER story?

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