E-books and Apps and #kidlitchat, Oh My!

Next week, on Tuesday the 15th at 9 PM Eastern/6 PM Pacific, #kidlitchat will be all about e-books and apps and how we in the broad collection of lovers of books for young readers from board book to YA, from poetry to prose are dealing (or not!) with this brave new world (which, I must note, has a lot in common with the brave old world).

Let's pool our knowledge and ideas and resources and, if we've got 'em, discuss our fears. And let's have fun and speak in 140 character bits as we do so.

Personally, I think apps and e-books are our friends. I also think that we can't afford to watch the changes happen without understanding the whos whats and wheres of it all.

I hope you'll join us on Twitter next week. If you're new to chats or want a refresher in how to get the most out of them, I highly recommend Debbie Ridpath Ohi's article on Twitter chats. And if you've got questions, feel free to ask here or find me or #kidlitchat co-host Bonnie Adamson on Twitter!

Twitter Tags of Interest for Children's Literature (from Picture Book to YA)

Here is an attempt to create a list of the various tags used on Twitter that relate to the field of children's literature. This will be a "living" document, changing as Twitter changes and as new tags pop up.

#kidlit - used all the time. used for news of interest in children's literature. (To be honest, this tag isn't used as often as it could be!)

#kidlitchat - used on Tuesdays at 9 PM Eastern/6 PM Pacific for a weekly chat about all things kidlit, but used sporadically through the week, too.

#YALitChat - used on Wednesday at 9 PM Eastern/6 PM Pacific for a chat about YA, but also used all week long for YA Lit type topics.

#kidlitart - used on Thursday at 9 PM Eastern/6 PM Pacific for a weekly chat about the art of picture books. Used some during the week, too.

#yalit - used all week long for items related to YA Lit.

#PBlitchat - another picture book chat tag, writing based. The chat has moved off Twitter, but the tag still used for picture book stuff during the week, too.

#scbwi - used to tag news and information related to or of interest to SCBWI members (local, national, and international)

#titletalk - a Sunday chat, but the tag is used during the week, too, highlighting specific titles

#amwriting - a cross-genres and cross-age groups tag for those who are writing

#speakloudly - this tag deals with a situation involving Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak, and is still heavily involved in issues involving challenges to children's books.

#nfmon - used to tag posts related to non-fiction Monday.

#NFforKids - used all week long for links related to non-fiction for kids.


#poetryfriday - used to tag posts related to Poetry Friday.


There are many more tags that cross into children's literature from time to time:

#askagent, #publishing, #books, #poetry, #amediting, #literacy, and no doubt dozens more I'm forgetting.

There are also tags like #kidlitcon that relate to individual events and others that relate to one-time chats. I am trying to list only tags that work year round.

Have any to add to this list? Please let me know so we can keep this list up to date. Leave a comment here, email me, or even tweet me!

A New Twitter Chat - all about children's literature!

Bonnie Adamson and I are excited to announce a brand new Twitter chat that we'll be co-hosting. The first chat will be Wednesday night, 7/15, at 9 PM EDT/6 PM PDT, and we're using the hashtag #kidlitchat for now. Neither time nor tag are set in stone, by the way, but we wanted to get up and running sooner rather than later.

We hope that ANYONE with an interest in the craft and/or business side of writing for children, from board books through YA, will come join us.

The initial plan is that each chat will feature topics from a range of craft and business areas (hopefully suggested by all of us chatters!). We also hope to incorporate special guests in future chats. This first one will also include a focus on what we all would like to get out of a children's literature Twitter chat - be it community, knowledge, specific topics, a recreation of an SCBWI schmooze or...????

If you have any ideas, questions, or want more information, please leave a comment here or find Bonnie or me on Twitter.

Hope to see you there... and look for updates here and there as the chat evolves!

The New Kite Tales is Up!

Kite Tales is the quarterly, free publication of the SCBWI-Los Angeles chapter. If you are at all interested in writing or illustrating children's books, the whole issue, edited by Rilla Jaggia, is well worth checking out. It's free and chock full of interviews, updates, and information. And...

I'm excited to point you all to an article of mine called Twitter, Tweeting and You that starts on page 25 of this issue! The article tells you step by step how to set up an account, find people to follow, use direct messages, tweet effectively, and more. The publication is a PDF, and the link to Kite Tales will take you straight to the download page.

I hope you download Kite Tales and enjoy it... and if you have questions about Twitter or SCBWI-LA, ask away!

Twittering away....

I have to say, I've been having a lot of poetic fun on Twitter, even with National Poetry Month over. It's not all children's poetry specific - in fact, most of it isn't - but it's not like that really creates a barrier to conversation: it's poetry! Plus, Twitter's how I ran across this Lewis Carroll poem. Oooh. Who wants to take up that form as a poetry prompt?

A bunch of us have been chatting every Thursday night (9 PM Eastern/6 PM Pacific, with details here), and poet/novelist Colin Kelley put together a great list of poets on Twitter, so I've met even more cool folks.

There are also great lists of YA authors on Twitter, picture book authors on Twitter and even a new list of middle grade authors on twitter.

If you're tweeting, I hope you'll find me on Twitter or let me know here, cuz it's not like I'm going anywhere. I'm just saying there's good times to be had! Although right now, I must admit sleep sounds like the best time of all right now, so I gotta book....

The Twitter #poetry chat

Scroll right on down to see Marilyn Singer's wonderful In the Museum... or hang out here a minute to hear an invitation to Friday's Twitter #poetry chat!

Yes, at 2 Eastern/11 Pacific on Friday, we'll be talking poetry on Twitter. Using the #poetry tag on tweets so we can find each other, a group of... who knows who or how many ... will be hanging out for an hour talking about poets and poetry, sharing Twitter verse, resources, and, well, we have no idea what will happen! That's part of the poetry of it, seems to me.

You can read more about the idea of the #poetry chat right here. If there are topics you'd love to chat about (and this is not a children's poetry specific chat at all, by the way), feel free to leave a note in the comments or at the above link. Hope to see you there!

Twitter, #poetry, #kidlit... and an invitation!

It’s Poetry Friday again, with this week’s roundup at The Drift Record, the blog of Julie Larios -- one of the participants in 30 Poets/30 Days! But before you head over there, why not stick around a minute while I talk a little about Twitter (and poetry!)?

Twitter is a fast growing social network where folks “tweet” messages of 140 characters or less to each other. To make conversations trackable, people can categorize what they say by the use of the # sign (called a hashtag) within a tweet. For example, if you include #poetry in your tweet, folks can find your comment (and other people talking #poetry) by searching Twitter for the hashtag.

There are millions of users of Twitter (including President Obama), but only a few of them are tweeting about #poetry and #kidlit. National Poetry Month seems like a good time to change the former, and Poetry Friday, all the great children's poetry blog projects this month, and the growing Kidlitosphere make it a great time to change the latter, too. But why? Well...

One thing I re-learned when Fibs were spreading around the web is that there are poetry lovers in every walk of life. They may not write or read poems regularly, but they love to be reminded of it… and get re-invigorated. They’re on Twitter. Parents are on Twitter, too, maybe not spending enough time thinking about kids' books... or maybe looking for information. You don’t go on Twitter and say “buy my book!!!” of course, but if we start using #kidlit even just talking among ourselves, I'm pretty sure before long we'll meet all sorts of fascinating people who share our love of children's literature.

So my invitation to you is to join me in April, tweeting away about #kidlit and #poetry. We can share ideas and resources. We can make some poetic noise. And really, now… doesn’t that sound like fun?

You can find me on Twitter as GottaBook and also get updates from 30poems30days. I'll have more detailed information (including ideas about what to tweet to get you started) next week. I'm soooo looking forward to April here on the blog... and I'll see you in the Twitterverse, too!