Hello March On With Mentor Texts!
Welcome to our First Annual March On With Mentor Text Registration.
IMPORTANT INFO: A number of you are having trouble getting notifications. Please make sure your Facebook is open and signed into, and please use your Facebook E-mail Address. We are not sure why, but that seems to work. So many are also not having problems so it's hard to say what the exact cause is.
AND NOW BACK TO OUR REGISTRATION POST:
When ReFoReMo sadly ended last year, I knew I just couldn't let the month of celebrating Mentor Texts fade away. And so, I have created MARCH ON WITH MENTOR TEXTS!
For those who don’t know me, my name is Lynne Marie. I have been an active Member of the Kidlit community and SCBWI since 1999. I am a multi-published picture book author, as well as the Owner / CEO of www.rateyourstory.org. I am the Spotlight Feature Coordinator / Columnist for Children's Book Insider since 2015 and a CYBILS Award Round 1 Judge since 2016. I also run a successful Critique and Mentoring service, www.thepicturebookmechanic.com.
I have always been a huge fan of Mentor Texts, way back from my first SCBWI Writing Conference in 2000. There, I heard the inimitable Richard Peck say, “read 100 books in the genre before you try your hand at writing one…” Although the phrase mentor text wasn’t popular at that time, I realized that there was something to learn from each and every book we read (good or bad, same genre or not).
We can learn what to do from the well-written books as well as what not to do with the not-so-well-written books! We can be inspired to try new and different approaches, a variety of styles and methods. We can learn which publishers may be interested in our books and which may not. We can learn storytelling and craft, and sometimes, even, humor! Of course, we can learn things like character and plot from almost any book, (not to mention, cartoons, comics, plays and movies [including K-Dramas <wink, wink>]). In this ever-changing business of publishing, we never stop learning and can never stop reading. But for a picture book writer, Mentor Texts are extremely important.
So at this time, I invite you all to register for our event. Registration begins today and runs until March 30, 2022 (THIS HAS BEEN EXTENDED due to website issues). Register as follows:
1. Sign up for our posts by entering your e-mail address in the subscription box at the bottom of our blog: Rate Your Story | Blog (Click here).
2. Comment in the comment section of the post with your name, a mentor text that you found helpful and why.
3. Get a bonus entry by signing up for our Newsletter at www.tinyurl.com/getRYSnews or at the very bottom of each post where it says Get RYS eNews. Note in the comment that you are a subscriber.
4. Get a bonus entry by sharing this challenge on Social Media and tagging @RateYourStory #MarchOnWithMentorTexts #RateYourStory Note in the comment where you have shared the post.
To be eligible for any and all prizes, you will need to be receiving Rate Your Story blogposts by e-mail subscription, as well as to have registered on the registration post with your name/mentor text comment.
Winners will be selected at the close of our event, and will be notified via a Rate Your Story Blogpost with the winner's list on or about May 1st 2022. Winners will need to contact me at RYS.CyberOffice@gmail.com with March On With Mentor Text Prize - [Note Prize] in the subject line and their prize delivery information in the body of the e-mail. Please note that prizes must be claimed by May 15, 2022, as we cannot be tracking them after that date. We will get them to you as soon thereafter as practicable, but please note that I am scheduled to be out of the country from May 23 - June 7 2022.
Prize Delivery Information should include full name and e-mail address for any and all critiques and name, address, e-mail address and phone number for any prizes to be delivered by the authors or by Amazon.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation in this regard. But especially, thank you for joining us. We are all so very happy to have you here and to share our love of Mentor Texts with you!
Here is the start of the list of Mentor Texts - apologies for the delay in getting this complete, but we have plenty of time to start finding these books with two weeks until our event. Please check back often as it will be updated daily:
Our Kick-Off post will go live on February 28th and will feature Founder Carrie Charley Brown and Co-Coordinator Kirsti Call, along with two Rate Your Story prizes.
Lynne Marie is the author of Hedgehog Goes to Kindergarten - art by Anne Kennedy (Scholastic 2011), Hedgehog's 100th Day of School – art by Lorna Hussey (Scholastic 2017),The Star of the Christmas Play-- art by Lorna Hussey (Beaming Books 2018),Moldilocks and the 3 Scares -- art by David Rodriguez Lorenzo (Sterling and Scholastic 2019), Let’s Eat! Mealtime Around the World -- art by Parwinder Singh (Beaming Books 2019), The Three Little Pigs and the Rocket Project -- art by Wendy Fedan (Mac and Cheese Press, 2022), American Pie (Dancing Flamingo Press April 12 2022), There Was a Blue Whale Who Tangled with Plastic (Dancing Flamingo Press Spring 2023) and more, forthcoming. She’s also the Owner and Administrator of RateYourStory.org and a Travel Agent. She currently lives on a lake in South Florida with her family, a Schipperke named Anakin, where, if she's not mentoring, she's daydreaming and fracturing fairy tales. Visit her on her website www.LiterallyLynneMarie.com. Lynne Marie is represented by Marisa Cleveland ofwww.theseymouragency.com Follow her on Facebook here and on Twitter here.
