Sociable SCBWIs - Rebecca Colby

I have written before here and here about how how friendly the world of children's literature is and I am going to do it again in this post.  Last month, when I asked my online friend, fellow SCBWI member and brilliant picture-book writer; Rebecca Colby, for some advice for things to do with kids in her hometown, she not only responded with some great ideas, we also decided to meet up and had a lovely time eating ice-cream and talking about writing.

Rebecca and I

I love Rebecca’s latest book "It's Raining Bats & Frogs", it is really well-written with some lovely poetic refrains and is a great example of picture book plotting.  I adore the art and have enjoyed reading illustrator Steve Henry’s blog posts on his working process on this book, covering concept design, final art and I especially love this post about layout.

For the aspiring children’s picture book authors and illustrators reading this, you must check out Rebecca’s guest Sub It Club blog post about querying agents.  She reads between the lines of her successful query letter for "It's Raining Bats & Frogs" to show what your letter is  actually saying to agents about you and your story.  It has certainly helped me craft my own query submissions. 

I know that we can expect a few more picture books from Rebecca in the future and you can also get her debut book "There Was a Wee Lassie Who Swallowed a Midgie" .  "It's Raining Bats & Frogs"
isn’t available in UK shops yet but it can be ordered pretty quickly from Amazon, I highly recommend it to you and if you get the chance to meet Rebecca, I recommend her too.