Still More Curiosity List

I’m sharing the stuff I want to learn this year. See my other posts for Teaching and Tech topics, and Storytime and Literacy topics!

CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

I successfully completed my read-365-picture-books-in-2011 challenge and loved how just looking at that many books honed my critical eye. Now I want to keep delving deeper into how picture books work.

21. Study more cut-paper collage picture book artists with an eye to improving my homemade big books

I really don’t know how much time I’ll have for making big books this year, but there’s so many awesome collage artists out there, if I can read a bunch now, maybe when I carve out time to make more books I’ll have a few more tricks under my belt.

22. Re-read Molly Bang and Uri Shulevitz on picture book composition and read Caldecott winners with an eye to seeing great composition in action

I wrote this before the #nerdcott challenge was invented! I accepted the challenge–I will probably not get all 300-odd titles read this year, though–and now I have a great lens to use while I’m going through them all.

23. Build up my knowledge of non-fiction picture books (a la Roving Fiddlehead)

Most of the picture books I read last year were fiction. Time to add in more non-fiction!

24. Type up texts of picture books to study page breaks
25. Type up texts of great first readers to learn structure & flow

When I was an undergrad, my creative writing teachers encouraged us to hand write or type up the texts that we really loved. It’s a way to read them more slowly and deeply. I want to do the same for some favorite picture books, to learn what it is that works so well for me in the books I love.

26. Study structure of professional picture book reviews

I’m not interested at the moment in being a reviewer (which is why you don’t see reviews here on Mel’s Desk) but by learning more about what questions reviewers ask of the books they read, I’ll be better equipped to form my own opinions of the books *I* read.

That’s my list–for now! Yes I know it’s impossible to do it all in one year! What’s on YOUR Curiosity List?