The Story of a Story

Writers young and old know it's hard to create a story of one's own, here's a simple, elegant picture book that might help them find the key. Hint: It involves persistence.

A mostly empty page
Then another.
And still another.
There are squiggles.
There are doodles.
But the words won't come.

If you've ever tried to write a story of your own, you know it's not as easy as it looks. Words get tangled, pencils get broken, after a while you'll do anything just to distract yourself! The Story of a Story follows a boy with just the same problem as he struggles to find inspiration and get his words flowing.

He tries everything, scribbling, scrawling, and crumbling pages. He reads stories he loves and eats a cookie reaaaaaally slowly, just to pass the time. But just when he's about to give up hope, he sees a little chickadee collecting seeds outside his window. He admires its concentration and commitment as it picks away, one seed at a time, determined and unstoppable. The boy knows this is what it takes to create something special, so he comes back to his desk and writes just one word, and then another.

Two-time SCBWI Golden Kite Award Winner Deborah Hopkinson writes with the gentle reassurance of experience in The Story of a Story, with the help of the buoyant illustrations of Hadley Hooper.

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

Hardcover.

About the Author
Deborah Hopkinson is as award-winning of picture books, fiction, and nonfiction for young readers. In 2013 she received a Robert F. Sibert Honor and YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award honor for Titanic: Voices from the Disaster. She has won the SCBWI Golden Kite Award for Picture Book Text Twice, for A Band of Angels and Apples to Oregon. Sky Boys, How They Built the Empire State Building, was a Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor awardee. She lives near Portland, Oregon.

Hadley Hooper is a fine artist and the illustrator of many distinctive picture books, including The Iridescence of Birds, by Patricia Maclachlan, Another Way to Climb a Tree, by Liz Garton Scanlon, and Two Brothers, Four Hands, by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan. She lives in Denver, Colorado.