Valerie Bolling joined Highlights Foundation Social Media Manager Cat Galeano on Instagram Live to talk about her upcoming mini-course Picture Book Beginnings and Endings.

Watch the conversation below. (Please note: closed captions are being added to the video below. When they are finished, you can see them by hovering over the bottom of the video and choosing the “CC” icon.)

Full Transcript:

Cat:
A big hello to our Highlights Foundation family. We’re so happy to have you here with us! For those that may not know me, I’m Cat Galiano, my pronouns are she/her and I’m the social media manager for the Highlights Foundation, joining you from Westchester, New York on the traditional lands of the Siwanoy people.

Apart from all the fun things I get to do for the Highlights Foundation, I am a writer and also a reader who is very extied to have this lunchtime chat with our friend and faculty Valerie Bolling, who will be teaching the upcoming Mini Picture Book Beginnings and Endings: A Two-Night Mini.

Before we dive in, I just want to remind our viewers that joining in in any Highlights Foundation sessions, to do so with no hate, no harm and no harassment of any kind. And now let’s get started.

As an aspiring picture book writer myself, I love the topic of this webinar. Because who doesn’t struggle with openings and closings of their picture book manuscript? So first I want to start with: what’s a memorable opening that you didn’t write that really brought a story to life for you?

Valerie:
Sure, I wanna say too that you’re–first of all, I’m thrilled to see you, Cat. It’s always a pleasure to be with you. And you’re right. Beginnings and endings are tough for a lot of people. And so I will give away one tip before I respond to your question: Don’t just write one. You have to write a number of them and then not only do you decide which one works best, but you have your critique partners to help you, and sometimes you sort of merge two together to create something new. So I’ll, I’ll say that first.

But one of my…there are so many wonderful beginnings, and if people take the class, tey’ll get exposed to a lot of them, but one that I really am loving right now is from Tonya Abari’s book Locs, Not Dreads…and I’m going to read it to you: “One crisp fall morning, Selah was feelin’ herself GLISTEN. Her slide was electric as she danced down the driveway.” Now if that doesn’t pull you in and get you excited and so forth. I don’t know what will.

Cat:
Those words just pop off the page and I, I want to do a little dance with that character too.

Valerie:
So yeah, let’s dance.

Cat:
Let’s dance–I love it. Oh man, we’re gonna have to go and get that book too because that, that opening is incredible. So I’m going to ask you the same question, but about your own work, can you tell us about a favorite or crucial piece–opening OR closing–that you wrote in one of your own stories?

Valerie:
So I think I’ll share another opening and it is an opening. It’s a spoiler. It’s to my picture book that will come out in May, I See Color. It’s co-authored by Kailei Pew and the illustrator is Laylie Frazier and it’s published by Harper Collins. So a little, you know, little commercial. So here is the first page: “Cool like an autumn breeze/Warm like the summer sun/Steady like the night/Rising like the dawn/Beautiful like a quilt of stitched together stories/I see color.”

Cat:
Selfishly, can I ask you to read it one more time?

Valerie:
Absolutely. Once the book comes out, I have a feeling I’ll be reading it a lot. And I realize there’s a bit of a tongue twister there with the “stitched together stories.”

Happy to do it again: “Cool like an autumn breeze/Warm like the summer sun/Steady like the night/Rising like the dawn/Beautiful like a quilt of stitched together stories/I see color.”

Cat:
I mean: wow, I got chills cause all those words are just beautiful. But also I feel like we can all as humanity can all relate to those feelings and and I think that you’re both always do a really great job with that. But specifically with your opening, like that warm sun like you know what that feels like, no matter where you are, where you come from. But like you know that feeling when you’re sitting in the sun and just feel…you know, stitched stories. it and you know stitch stories. Oh man, I can’t wait for this book–when does this one come out?

Valerie:
Thank you! Kailei and I are really excited about it. That’s for sure.

Cat:
When is it due to come out?

Valerie:
May 28th.

Cat:
Of this year?

Valerie:
Yes.

Cat:
Right around the corner, friends, let’s get that summer book right on our shelves. And so my last question is: why do you think it’s so important to nail down your beginnings and/or your ending?

Valerie:
Sure. So, the beginning is, of course, an invitation to the reader. And it’s an invitation, just as when we get an invitation to an event. We get to decide whether we want to go or not. Whether we’re available to go or not and…so this is an invitation, and if you’re inviting someone in–just as if you’re inviting someone to an event–you want them to be excited about it. You want them to want to be there so this, the beginning, creates an opportunity for the author to say “Come in. Read me.”

And for picture books, we want to have something that not only attracts the young reader, but the adult reader as well, right? Read it to the child. So it should be crafted in such a way that someone wants to know more. Maybe it’s the language. Maybe someone thinks the language is beautiful. Maybe, which I hope they’ll think for I see Color, that could be a pull. Maybe for Tonya’s book, it’s, you said you felt like dancing when you read that. So it’s something that it’s so important because you want to pull the reader in and make the reader want to read.

With ending things, what you want to really create is something that will make the reader want to read the book again and again, right? How do you do that? You’ve got to leave them with something. You’ve got to leave them with something so that they’ll want to come back again so that they will remember this book. And, you know, you wanna leave them with a feeling, I think. The feeling could be a feeling of ahhhh, it’s warm a hug. It could be a feeling where you’re left with a lot of questions, like mmmm…lots of things to discuss. It could be a twisty ending, something where you’re like, wow! I’m surprised, I didn’t expect that. But you want to create something that just is so memorable that people will want to read the story again and again. And also share it with others.

Cat:
And it’s also one of those things, like you know, a picture book you want to read again and again. But also, every year after year after year, because like there are picture books that I read as a child that I still read now as an adult. So it’s like that feeling of leaving that something at the end so that someone will want to carry that book throughout their life and pass it on to all their friends or their kids or their friends kids and whatnot. So I love that

And I also love that you touched on the fact that like it’s so important to write many, many different picture books, like if one is not working, write a different picture book. But I also think it’s important to to read all the picture books cause you know, reading educates you so much on, you know, what’s working, what’s not working.

Like, you see your manuscript and think “why isn’t this working?” Like perhaps go to the library and see other books and, you know, read and see what is trending and what’s not trending or what is working and what isn’t working. So I love that you touched on just writing and writing and writing and also reading.

Valerie:
Yes! You have to read. And as I said, for those who take this course the way I teach the course is to show beginnings from books and endings from books, and I’m hoping that people will derive inspiration, right? These will serve as mentor texts and I made a commitment to highlight authors from diverse backgrounds, the books I share, I also have rhyming, I have fiction. I have nonfiction, right? Because we all write different types of books. So you need to see model beginnings and endings in a variety of formats.

Cat:
That’s amazing. I didn’t even think about that, so I’m really glad you highlighted that, that you’ll be showing different examples from diverse authors from sort of just like a collection of of all the wonderful stuff out there so people can see the different avenues they can, hey can try.

That’s all I have today. Do you have anything you want to add?

Valerie:
No. So I wanna respect it. We said we would keep it short, so we’ll keep it short. But maybe you want to tell people how they can sign up, OK?

Cat:
Yes, yes.

Valerie:
In the comments or anything like that, a link to registration.

Cat:
So that’s sort of my outro, so. If you’d like to learn from Valerie, make sure to sign up for her class, Picture Book Beginnings and Endings: A Two-Night Mini taking place March 5th and 7th. You can register on our website highlightsfoundation.org and lastly, you can purchase Valerie’s books at our virtual Book Shop powered by bookshop.org. Thank you, Valerie, for joining us today. We cannot wait to see you online.

Valerie:
Thank you so much. And I actually did think of one other thing if I may.

Cat:
Oh, sure.

Valerie:
All right. I also teach my own picture book classes and actually today I’m sending out an e-mail for the spring session. So if anyone is listening and interested, they should e-mail me. They can contact me through my author website or I’ll quickly give my e-mail here. It’s valeriebollingauthorATgmail.com, but they can also just do it straight from the page on my website. So if you want to be, that those classes will be starting in March. It’s a six week session. Even if you can’t make that session, if you want to be added to my email list for future sessions, please let me know.

Cat:
Yes, there you go. You can find Valerie accross her socials or on her website and she just shared her email. So thank you so much, Valerie.

Valerie:
You’re welcome.

Cat:
We hope to see you online soon. Bye.