Report About Children’s Books From the SCBWI Conference

ByPhyllis Zimbler Miller

I’m going to share information from a workshop session I attended today at the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators conference in Los Angeles.

Neal Porter, editorial director of Roaring Brook Press, now an imprint of the Macmillan Children’s Book Group, spoke about the books he has published and why he liked these.

Porter used a slideshow of the book covers to illustrate his talk and here are the 12 books he shared:

  • ACTION JACKSON by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan with illustrations by Robert Andrew Parker
  • BALLET FOR MARTHA: MAKING APPALACHIAN SPRING by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan with illustrations by Brian Floca
  • BAD KITTY by Nick Bruel
  • LITTLE NIGHT by Yuyi Morales
  • FIRST THE EGG by Laura Vaccaro Seeger
  • AMANDINA by Sergio Ruzzier
  • UNDERGROUND by Shane W. Evans
  • SCRAWL by Mark Shulman
  • REDWOODS by Jason Chin
  • A SICK DAY FOR AMOS MCGEE by Philip C. Stead with illustrations by Erin Stead
  • AND THEN IT’S SPRING by Julie Fogliano with illustrations by Erin Stead
  • LITTLE TUG by Stephen Savage
  • ZEUS: KING OF THE GODS (OLYMPIANS) by George O’Connor
  • A IS FOR MUSK OX by Erin Cabatingan with illustrations by Matthew Myers
  • ABC3D by Marion Bataille

And to the applause of the workshop participants, Porter showed the YouTube video created for ABC3D — a video that has been viewed by almost 3 million people:


As you will notice from the above book list, many of the authors are also the illustrators of their books. Porter assured the workshop that authors do not have to also be illustrators to get their books traditionally published.

He did, though, remind authors not to submit their books with an illustrator already attached. The publisher of a children’s book has the right to assign an illustrator, and Porter said one of the things he especially enjoys is matching an illustrator to an author.

Click here to read a post I wrote of a workshop about Amazon publishing that I also attended at the SCBWI conference.

© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks. A new nonfiction ebook of hers is TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and her newest fiction ebook is the thriller CIA FALL GUY.
Click here to visit her Amazon author page at amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller

She also has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com