**Edited on April 21 to add: The winner of this scholarship has been announced. Check out Kristy Dempsey’s announcement.**

In 2008, several children’s writers joined together for a retreat in Boyds Mills, PA, the home of Highlights Magazine and the wonderful Highlights Foundation. We were all working on different stories in different genres, and so we planned a working retreat, not one where we would meet often to learn from a speaker, but one that would allow us the time we needed to dive deep into our stories and come up for air when we needed it. As it turned out, we usually came up for air about 4:00 pm every day, meeting together to share not only what we had written, but also a few tears and a lot of laughter.

The time we spent alone writing and the time we spent together encouraging one another was important for the stories we were working on at the time and to prepare us for the stories we would work on after our retreat at Boyds Mills. It was so important for us that we want to provide the same opportunity for another writer. The Highlights Foundation is offering Unworkshops during various dates throughout 2014. Consider it time to get away and write what your heart most wants to work on. We can’t work it out for any of us to go back right now, so we’re sending one of you!

If you are a sincere and dedicated writer who could use this focused time, our retreat group is offering 5 night’s stay at a Highlights Foundation Unworkshop, daily writing prompts/encouragement from the members of our retreat group (picture book, non-fiction, middle grade and young adult authors) for the length of your workshop and hopefully even a Skype gab session with one or more of us during your Unworkshop (depending on dates and availability.) (You would be responsible for your own transportation to Boyds Mills.)

To qualify for consideration for this prize, send a statement by March 31, 2014 (to [email protected]) explaining why this retreat could be important to you as a writer/illustrator of children’s literature. Share a little about the project you would plan to work on during the retreat and your experience writing or illustrating for children. We’ll consider all entries and announce the recipient on April 15, 2014.

Happy Writing!

Loree Griffin Burns
Kristy Dempsey
Katy Traffanstedt Duffield
Kathy Erskine
Alma Fullerton
Sara Lewis Holmes
Anne Marie Pace
Tanya Goulette Seale
Linda Urban
Cassandra Reigel Whetstone

Tickled to announce that Handle with Care is a spring 2014 Junior Library Guild selection. Thank you, JLG!

I cannot tell you how happy this makes me. I adored those flyers as a kid. And now my books is IN one!

 

I’m excited to be speaking at this years National Science Teachers Association annual conference in Boston, Massachusetts. You can find general information on the conference website, including a complete schedule and registration information. I’ll be at the conference all day on Saturday, April 5, and I’d love to see you at one of these venues:

 

12:30-1:30pm, Room 259A, Presentation

How Can I Help? Empowering Students with Citizen Science

Scientist and author Loree Griffin Burns explores citizen science as a means of empowering students and elementary science teachers in an age of environmental uncertainty.

 

2:00-3:00pm, Macmillan Booth (#818), Book Signing

I’ll be signing copies of Citizen Scientists: Be a Part of Scientific Discovery in Your Own Backyard.

3:00-3:30pm, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Booth (#1021), Book Signing

I’ll be signing copies of Tracking Trash and The Hive Detectives and sharing a sneak peak of my upcoming Scientists in the Field title. Come on by!

 

 

I’m thrilled to join the faculty of the 2014 New England Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators annual spring conference. This year’s event will be held at the Sheraton in Springfield, Massachusetts from Friday, May 2 through Sunday, May 4. There is still time to register, so click on over to the conference website.

If nonfiction is your thing, check out my workshops. Both are scheduled for Saturday:

 

Crafting a Nonfiction Book Proposal, presented by Loree Griffin Burns

In today’s trade market, most books of children’s nonfiction are sold to publishers in proposal form. That is, the book idea is pitched in a specific abridged format and the final book is only written when a publisher accepts the proposal. This workshop is designed to shine a light on this process, to introduce attendees to the basic elements of the book proposal, and to provide tools for turning nonfiction book ideas into strong, sellable proposals.

 

Writers as Architects: Building Structure in Nonfiction, presented by Loree Griffin Burns and Alexandra Siy

Alexandra Siy and Loree Griffin Burns write nonfiction books that rely on a variety of literary structures to convey information. In this presentation, these award-winning authors will explore their view of structure as an essential guiding force in the creation of solid works of nonfiction, and share the processes they use to determine the best structure for a given project. Attendees will explore a variety of structural shapes as they are represented in contemporary children’s nonfiction, and will leave the hour with a stronger grasp of how these structures—from the straight line of chronologically-told stories to the circles, spirals, towers and constellations of more inventive approaches—can be used to gird their own works of nonfiction.