I Lost My Elephant
Check out my latest book: I Lost My Elephant! In this entertaining story, a young boy has lost his elephant. As he goes from place to place looking for her, no one knows where she is, but the reader can spot the elephant’s silly antics! Not until the last page does the boy finally see his lost elephant. Sprinkled throughout…
New Duck Books!
Announcing the release of two new Duck and Friends books, now in color! Check out Duck and Friends: Bots in a Box and Duck and Friends Go Into Orbit! Available on Amazon and other online retailers in paperback and kindle. Enjoy!
Tools for Authors: Upwork
Alt. title: Where Have I Been? With sincere apologies to those few of you who have left me real messages in the “contact us” form, and who I’ve missed because of all the spam messages, Spencer Meadow Press has moved operations to the freelancer site: Upwork. If you want to find me and skip the rest of this post, just…
Writing Rhyming Picture Books Part 1: Rhyming Words and Assessing Meter
Picture books don’t have to have rhyme and meter. My all-time favorite picture book, the one I like to call “perfection in a picture book,” If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, has neither. The Cat in the Hat has both. Another of my favorites, Jamberry, is a rhyming picture book with a different meter on every two-page spread. Nancy…
Tools for Authors: Fiverr
There’s a really cool website called Fiverr.com where people from all over the world post their services. It used to be that everything was $5 (hence the name), but Fiverr has changed some rules and so now rates that are listed might be considerably higher. They’re still very reasonable, though, for the most part. Fiverr sellers are professionals in many fields,…
How Children Learn to Read Part 2: STAND
As children who have been introduced to reading through board books and pictures books (How Children Learn to Read Part 1: SIT) get older, they reach a point where they want to do it themselves. I call this stage STAND. And as delightful as picture books are, many are too difficult to be read by children who are just learning…
Shutterfly: Because Sometimes You Only Want One Book
A couple years ago our family was given the generous gift of a vacation to Southern California. We visited a bunch of amusement parks, toured the USS Midway (a surprise hit!) and spent time on the beach. And at one stop we stayed at a resort hotel which provided us some extra perks, including a coupon from Shutterfly for us…
Writing Early Readers, Part 2: Using Lexile Levels
Once you understand how the Lexile system works (Writing Early Readers, Part 1: Understanding Lexile Levels), the next step is to use the Lexile system to write at the desired level. This matters most when you are writing books to be read by young readers. Suppose you want to write an early reader for grades K-2. Here’s how I did…
Writing Early Readers, Part 1: Understanding Lexile Levels
The genre of early readers can be fun and delightful (Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham) or dull as dry toast (Dick and Jane). Maybe the only element these books have in common is the ease with which they can be read. If you want to write early readers (generally grades K-2), it is necessary to understand concepts that factor…
Tools for Authors: Readers’ Favorite Reviews
As a self-published author, you’re probably always looking for those elusive reviews. We need customer reviews, but it is also nice to have something to put in the “Editorial Reviews” section of your Amazon listing. I sometimes ask my connections who are experts in the field to write something for me, and I also go to Readers’ Favorite. (Full disclosure:…