B.J. Lee: The Poet and the Picture Book Writer

B.J. Lee's author signing at Barnes & Noble, Clearwater FL

Many of us poet-types also engage in other writing projects, like picture books, nonfiction, or novels. But are we always consciously aware of the changes we go through to make that happen? For me, the writer's transmutation—how we adapt one skill set to accommodate a different genre—is complex and mysterious.

How, for example, are the processes of writing poetry and rhyming picture books similar or different?
 

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I posed this question to TLD contributor B. J. Lee, and she was kind enough to address the matter for me.

B.J. Lee is our resident expert on poetry forms, but with her debut rhyming picture book released from Pelican Publishing earlier this year, I asked if she might talk about how a poet who excels in poetry forms transformed into a picture book author.


So here she is, hungry readers— 
Chomp down on this appetizing article by B.J. Lee!



The Poet and the Picture Book Writer

This poet and this picture book writer are different artists. As a poet, I struggle with story structure. It used to be far easier for me to write an entire poetry collection of 20 or so poems than it was for me to write one picture book. Fortunately, picture book writing is getting a smidgen easier for me and it’s a good thing because poetry is a very hard sell. I still write lots of poetry but picture books call out to me as well.

So what is the difference between writing a poem and writing a picture book? The first and probably most important difference is arc. A poem needs no arc. A picture book relies heavily on arc.

Because I struggled with picture book writing, for the Gator character I had in mind, I was drawn to a form with a built-in arc. So how did I turn the structure of There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly into a picture book with my character, Gator?

I followed the built-in arc of There Was an Old Lady...which gave me rising action.

As Gator unwisely swallows a succession of hapless animals, he becomes increasingly uncomfortable. Something has to happen – a climax of some sort.

Text © 2019 by B.J. Lee. Illustrations © 2019 by David Opie.
From THERE WAS AN OLD GATOR WHO SWALLOWED A MOTH (Pelican Publishing)

I chose to change up the climax and not have Gator die. There is a trend in modern There Was an Old Lady... parodies, including those by Lucille Colandro, Jennifer Ward and Penny Parker Klostermann, to not have the main character die. I didn’t want Gator to die either. How did I set it up so Gator didn’t die? With my first stanza, and the moth/cough slant rhyme. Without including spoilers, perhaps you can guess how I used this rhyme pair to produce a better fate for Gator.

The other difference between poetry and picture books is that a poem it is about capturing one thing, with the exception of narrative poetry, but more on that later. A poem is about one moment, one feeling, one image. This begs the question: can you turn a poem into a picture book? While one moment, one feeling, one image, can be the start of a picture book, and perhaps a very good start, it will somehow need to be expanded into a story with an arc.

Here is an example of a poem about one thing.

Recently published in the Savannah Morning News.                                    

I don’t believe this story is expandable into a picture book. It captures one moment in nature. It doesn’t go anywhere story-wise. Got story? No.

The following poem, on the other hand, might be able to be expanded into a picture book because it has a narrative. I have no plans currently to turn this poem into a picture book but, now that I think about it… hmmmm. I guess time will tell! Got story? Maybe.

Highlights, June 2018

So if you have a narrative poem, which includes the ballad, as I previously discussed in a TLD post, you can explore it to see if you can make it into a picture book. I have several narrative poems I did this with, including one ballad. Of course, it usually has to be expanded greatly. There are other considerations when writing picture books such as pacing. How do you spread a story over 32 (or more) pages. It’s also important to think about page turns.

Very rarely we do find existing poems that have been made into picture books, but there are a few. One that comes to mind is A Fairy Went a-Marketing. This is an older poem by Rose Fyleman, originally published in her collection, Fairies and Chimneys (a wonderful collection, by the way, if you are partial to fairies...and who isn’t?).

Some songs have been made into picture books, and I consider songs to be poems set to music, such as Octopus’s Garden by Ringo Starr. Incidentally, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly was originally a song and it has been published as a picture book by writers such as Simms Taback and Pam Adams.

In conclusion, you might check to see if you have any poems that spark picture book ideas, particularly narrative poems. While Gator didn’t start with a poem, I was inspired to use a poetic cumulative rhyme structure to capture this larger-than-life character.

I feel very lucky to have had THERE WAS AN OLD GATOR WHO SWALLOWED A MOTH accepted by Pelican Publishing. When using cumulative rhyme as a picture book story structure, one really has to do something unique with it, because so many adaptations have been written. I had success with my version because it was regional and thus appealed to Pelican Publishing.

On my journey to picture book publication, the classic cumulative rhyme, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly inspired me to understand arc. I hope something in this post inspires you on your picture book journey.

Picture book publication has been such a blessing and I love how people are falling in love with my unfortunate character, whose appetite gets the best of him. My community is rallying around me and Gator in the form of a fabulous book launch.

"Gator Day" at Boyd Hill Nature Preserve, March 10, 2019.

Thank you, B.J., for another fabulous visit to Today's Little Ditty!

Read B.J.'s other TLD contributor posts: The Roundel and The Ballad.

AND thank you to Pelican Publishing for sending me a copy of There Was an Old Gator who Swallowed a Moth for one lucky TLD reader.

To enter, leave a comment below or send an email with the subject "Gator Giveaway" to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com by Tuesday, May 21, 2019. The winner will be randomly selected and announced next Friday.

B.J. Lee is a former college music librarian turned full-time writer and poet. Her debut picture book, There Was an Old Gator Who Swallowed a Moth, released January 28, 2019 from Pelican Publishing. She is an award-winning children’s poet with over 100 poems and stories published/forthcoming. She has written poems for children’s anthologists Lee Bennett Hopkins, J. Patrick Lewis, Kenn Nesbitt and others, and appears in anthologies by such publishers as Bloomsbury, National Geographic, Little, Brown, Otter-Barry and Wordsong. Magazine credits include Spider, Highlights, and The School Magazine.

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