by Vivian Kirkfield
Ten years ago, I skirted the shadows of Tara’s 2011 PiBoIdMo (now Storystorm) Challenge. I walked away with a notebook filled with 30 ideas and a thirst for more. Two months later, I hopped aboard the first year of Julie Hedlund’s 12×12 Picture Book Challenge and wrote 12 picture book manuscripts. I got in the habit of gathering ideas from wherever they came and turning them into picture book stories. And that habit came in handy in the fall of 2017. I sold a manuscript to Ann Rider at HMH and she didn’t want just that manuscript—she wanted NINE! She wanted to create a compilation book about inventions that changed the way the world moves. My deadline was May 1, 2018—which gave me nine months to hand in nine submission-ready narrative nonfiction picture book biographies.
The idea for the first story actually came from my sister who…
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