Writing Books for Kids and Teens

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

There are many people who believe that they could write a children’s
book if they only had a little friendly encouragement. To those would-be
authors, Marion Crook makes this offer: “This book will show you how
you can take your ideas and translate them into manuscripts. We are a
team, you and I. You provide the ideas, the tenacity, and the will to
succeed, and I will provide the way.”

For mentoring credentials, Crook can point to 10 children’s books and
eight nonfiction works published since she gave up a career as a nurse
to become a full-time writer. Her prescription for beginners with the
writing bug is a no-nonsense approach to getting down to business.
Perhaps the biggest clue to Crook’s own success as a writer is her
confession, “I love working on the second rewrite.” Throughout this
guide, Crook consistently demonstrates that she belongs to the
10-percent-inspiration-and–90-percent-perspiration school of writing.
She describes not just how to write a book but also how a writer gets
ready to write a book and even what a writer does after he or she has
written a book. Chapters include “The Basic Ingredients of a Story,”
“Getting Started,” “The Craft of Writing,” “Writing for
Different Age Groups,” “Writing Non-Fiction,” and the
all-important “Marketing Your Story to Publishers.”

Crook also discusses more arcane writing issues, like voice
appropriation, the art of writing accents, historical research, how to
start a second book, and maintaining a backlist. If you are looking for
a well-laid-out, comprehensive, down-to-earth introduction to this
highly specialized writing genre, Writing Books for Kids and Teens is an
outstanding value for its price range.