MEET THE AUTHOR! Look! I Wrote A Book! (And You Can, Too!) by Sally Lloyd-Jones

BASICALLY, you can write ANY book you like.

EXCEPT here's what you have to know: what you're talking about.

For instance, if you're writing about dinosaurs but you don't know any good dinosaur names or even how to spell cretaceous...

no one will believe anything you say.

That takes care of veracity and validity. But even a book stuffed with facts may not be what all readers want.

If you are writing a book for your grandma, a book about trucks loaded with facts may put her to sleep.

Grandmothers love the Olden Days. Or tap dancing.

Well, some of them do, anyway.

Then you need to choose your genre. That means what kind of book you write--Horror Stories, History... or Mystery.

Spiders on the Ceiling (This is a Horror Story!)

You'll want to save the really scary monster stories for older kids. Ditto for fancy words.

And then you'll need--THE PLOT (what happens in the story). You'll need to make it fit your genre and your projected audience. (Books about toy building blocks don't make for good teen romances.) Plots need characters, preferably not boring ones: then they must have a problem for the characters to work out, unexpected complications, and the solution of the problem that makes the reader feel satisfied. Illustrations are optional, but preferable, depending on your audience. Covers, however, are practically essential, or the pages will get dirty and fall out.

Finally, you need to get someone to buy your book. That means you are a published author. If that works, you get to write another book about the same subject-- called The Sequel.

The RETURN of the Spiders on the Ceiling (Sequel)

And noted author (which means she's written a lot of books and sold most of them) Sally Lloyd-Jones also throws in bonus terms like endpapers and blurbs, just so everyone will know you are a professional writer, in her latest, Look! I Wrote a Book! (And You Can Too!) (Schwartz and Wade, 2019). Veteran author Lloyd-Jones' book has an good illustrator (who draws the pictures) named Neal Layton, and a publisher, Schwarz and Wade (who takes care of putting on the page numbers and putting the pages inside the cover in order), who has thoughtfully left several blank pages instead for back endpapers, for beginning a book of your own. Lloyd-Jones puckishly directs reader attention to book biz terms, such as blurb

This one is tailor-made for Read Across America Day or National Library Week.

Sally Lloyd-Jones is a professional, veteran, and published author: And that's a fact.(See my reviews here!)

The Book Thief (alt. ver.): Where Are My Books? by Debbie Ridpath Ohi

SPENCER LOVED BOOKS. HIS FAVORITE BEDTIME STORY WAS NIGHTY-NIGHT, NARWHAL.

EVERY NIGHT SPENCER PUT THE BOOK BACK WHERE IT BELONGED. THAT WAY HE'D ALWAYS BE ABLE TO FIND IT.

UNTIL ONE MORNING....

Still in his beloved red narwhal pajamas, Spencer searches for his book.

It's nowhere. Not under his bed or on his shelf or in his closet.

His parents are not worried, sure that it'll turn up. But instead other books disappear from his shelves.

It's sad when Send In The Clown Fish vanishes. But when Sea Monkey Bob goes missing, that's IT! Spencer is sure there's a book thief in the house. Spencer shakes down his little sister, setting off a meltdown that requires way too much tea partying with her to make up for his false accusation. Then Spencer has a thought. Everywhere his books were, he finds odd stuff lying around--a rusty bolt, a tulip petal, a nut--in place of the missing books. Hmmm! Who or what would do that....?

Spencer sets up a trap, tying a stout length of yarn around an attractive book as bait and following the trail back in the morning to the real thieves (or thieves)--a bibliophilic squirrel family who have mistaken his room for a used book store. It takes some persuading, but eventually they hit on a compromise: the squirrels can borrow one book at a time, IF they return it whenever they're ready for a new one.

Spencer's Lending Library is soon more popular than a new crop of pecans, in Debbie Ridpath Ohi's Where Are My Books? (Simon and Schuster, 201), a book about books which makes a good introduction to good library use. Ohi's cartoons are detailed and whimsical and even non-book-lovers will go for the mystery and Spencer's nifty snare for his brushy-tailed book-nabbers. "The brightly colored, digital cartoons are expressive and sweetly endearing. Muted posters on the wall proclaim, "Turn it off and READ A BOOK!" says School Library Journal.