Hippity Hop on the Children's Author Blog Hop

This week I am excited to be participating in the Children's Author Blog Hop! For the hop, participating authors answer four identical questions and then invite three more authors to join in the hop. I was thrilled to be invited to participate in the hop by children's book author, Laura Sassi.

Laura’s poems, stories, articles and crafts have appeared in many publications including Highlights for Children, Cricket, Ladybug, Spider, Focus on the Family’s Clubhouse and Clubhouse Jr., FamilyFun, and Pack-O-Fun. She has a passion for playing with words and rhyming. Her first (awesome!) picture book, GOODNIGHT, ARK,  is now published by Zonderkidz, a HarperCollins Company. And Laura has a second book, GOODNIGHT, MANGER, slated for publication soon. Laura is represented by Lara Perkins of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency. Laura writes from her century-old home in New Jersey where she lives with her awesome husband, two adorable kids, and a black cockapoo named Sophie.

Thanks so very much, Laura, for inviting me to join in the hop!  And now for my answers to those four questions:

Go Outside the Rhymes: A Video With J.Patrick Lewis

My published (and soon-to-be-published) picture books are both written in rhyme. And I have published several rhyming poems in magazines as well. But when I was a teacher, I always encouraged my young writers NOT to write in rhyme. This is often good advice for beginning adult writers as well.

Rhyming is hard work. Especially if you want to do it well. And it is important to do it well. (As I have such fun teaching young readers and writers during my "Rhyme Crime Time" workshop where we investigate crimes of rhyme.)

So I absolutely loved this Reading Rockets video with the incredible children's poet, J. Patrick Lewis::


 


Hope you enjoyed it too!

p.s. Please make sure to visit my critique group's blog, The Paper Wait, for a cover reveal of Robin Constantine's upcoming YA novel, THE PROMISE OF AMAZING! And for a chance to win one of two advanced reader copies! Robin is an amazing author, so be sure to check it out!