Dear Readers,
Publishers, publishers, where are you?
I have written something new.
Editors, editors, look at my picture book,
Bianca, the cow, is in trouble. That's the hook.
Agents, agents, I know you are out there,
Pigs, sheep and horses give Bianca a scare.
Publishers, editors and agents, please read, please read, my book,
Children can read about how everyone becomes friends in their nook.
I'm a member of S.C.B.W.I. I'm a retired junior high school English teacher, and 4 of my poems have been published in separate anthologies.
I've taught for 22 years, and I've been writing childrens' picture books for 14 years, now.
I want to write for children, and I will work hard at it. Give me a chance. Give me a chance.
God bless.
Sincerely,
Ravenous Reader(A. K. A. Frankie )
Monday, January 24, 2011
Snow, videos and books on snow
Dear Readers,
"Snow, snow, snow," is the song Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye and Rosemary Clooney sing in the movie, WHITE CHRISTMAS. If the snow and this wintry weather get you down, rent the movie and see it. You would feel better afterwards.
My wife and I are tired of the snow, too. Another good movie to rent is IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, starring Henry Fonda and Donna Reed. This is a feel-good movie. Get it, if you don't have it already.
"A SNOWY DAY," written and illustrated by Ezra Jack Keats and published by Viking, in 1962, is a good book to read to your child. Most likely, your child can look at the illustrations, understand them and read on his own. That's what we want for our children---WE WANT THEM TO READ ON THEIR OWN.
Just to let you know, I've been working months on writing a children's picture book. I started with the title, BIANCA, THE COW, and now I changed it to "TROUBLE IN THE BARN." I feel like I don't have the story completely right, yet. It's a story about the pigs, sheep and horses bullying Bianca, the cow, in the barn, her reactions to it and how she solves the problem.
I'm still not finished, and I am still revising. My deadline is Thursday night, since I'm attending the S.C.B.W.I. convention on Friday and Saturday at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, in N.Y. Publishers, editors and agents will be there to hear my story, as well as other writers, teachers, etc, from all over the country in a round-robin session. There are two sessions where you can read your story, and it is critiqued by ten writers and a publisher or agent or editor, each time.
Fourteen years, you read correctly, fourteen years, I've been writing different picture books and submitting them out to publishers, and I know that someday soon, I shall have my story published.
Have your child read books about the seasons, and have them write about topics that are familiar to them and that they are interested in.
They can write about WHITE CHRISTMAS, IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, or A SNOWY DAY.
When you go shopping, do you have your child read the labels on the packages, or cereal boxes? This is reading, too.
Your child can also compare prices on items to be bought.
When you're crossing the street, have your child read the traffic signs.
I'll be working all this week on my story. Say a prayer for me.
Thanking you in advance,
God bless you.
Sincerely,
(Ravenous Reader- A.K.A. Frankie)
"Snow, snow, snow," is the song Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye and Rosemary Clooney sing in the movie, WHITE CHRISTMAS. If the snow and this wintry weather get you down, rent the movie and see it. You would feel better afterwards.
My wife and I are tired of the snow, too. Another good movie to rent is IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, starring Henry Fonda and Donna Reed. This is a feel-good movie. Get it, if you don't have it already.
"A SNOWY DAY," written and illustrated by Ezra Jack Keats and published by Viking, in 1962, is a good book to read to your child. Most likely, your child can look at the illustrations, understand them and read on his own. That's what we want for our children---WE WANT THEM TO READ ON THEIR OWN.
Just to let you know, I've been working months on writing a children's picture book. I started with the title, BIANCA, THE COW, and now I changed it to "TROUBLE IN THE BARN." I feel like I don't have the story completely right, yet. It's a story about the pigs, sheep and horses bullying Bianca, the cow, in the barn, her reactions to it and how she solves the problem.
I'm still not finished, and I am still revising. My deadline is Thursday night, since I'm attending the S.C.B.W.I. convention on Friday and Saturday at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, in N.Y. Publishers, editors and agents will be there to hear my story, as well as other writers, teachers, etc, from all over the country in a round-robin session. There are two sessions where you can read your story, and it is critiqued by ten writers and a publisher or agent or editor, each time.
Fourteen years, you read correctly, fourteen years, I've been writing different picture books and submitting them out to publishers, and I know that someday soon, I shall have my story published.
Have your child read books about the seasons, and have them write about topics that are familiar to them and that they are interested in.
They can write about WHITE CHRISTMAS, IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, or A SNOWY DAY.
When you go shopping, do you have your child read the labels on the packages, or cereal boxes? This is reading, too.
Your child can also compare prices on items to be bought.
When you're crossing the street, have your child read the traffic signs.
I'll be working all this week on my story. Say a prayer for me.
Thanking you in advance,
God bless you.
Sincerely,
(Ravenous Reader- A.K.A. Frankie)
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Special Friends Continued.
Dear Readers,
In my last blog, I wrote about friends and family. I omitted one special friend, Sheila. We taught together in a new school, and we were inseparable.
To this day, we are friends. We each take turns calling one another on the phone,
and we laugh from beginning to end.
Sheila is charming, sociable, outgoing, very friendly, and she has a pleasant personality. She is well-educated, well-informed, and she has a confident presence about her.
We now also have e-mail to keep in touch with each other.
Sheila is a true friend, just like my other friends I mentioned earlier.
I shall summarize two more books next week. In the meantime, READ, READ, READ.
You can read about Friendships, Families, Your Classmates, Your best friend, and you can write about all the Activities you, your friends and family participate in.
Children, have a great day tomorrow. Have fun in the snow.
God bless you.
Sincerely,
Ravenous Reader ( a.k.a. Frankie )
In my last blog, I wrote about friends and family. I omitted one special friend, Sheila. We taught together in a new school, and we were inseparable.
To this day, we are friends. We each take turns calling one another on the phone,
and we laugh from beginning to end.
Sheila is charming, sociable, outgoing, very friendly, and she has a pleasant personality. She is well-educated, well-informed, and she has a confident presence about her.
We now also have e-mail to keep in touch with each other.
Sheila is a true friend, just like my other friends I mentioned earlier.
I shall summarize two more books next week. In the meantime, READ, READ, READ.
You can read about Friendships, Families, Your Classmates, Your best friend, and you can write about all the Activities you, your friends and family participate in.
Children, have a great day tomorrow. Have fun in the snow.
God bless you.
Sincerely,
Ravenous Reader ( a.k.a. Frankie )
Friday, January 7, 2011
Happy New Year.
Dear Readers,
Hope you had a wonderful and healthy and happy New Year. Do you have any traditions for the New Year? My family and I do. We open our doors to let the New Year in and the Old Year out, at midnight, we throw dishes and cups out the window, we make a lot of noise by blowing our horns and whistles as we stroll through the house, and our Aunt Olimpia and Uncle Domenico come, playing the accordion and blowing the horn. Before we do all this, we sit and talk with each other at the family table, and we have cold cut sandwiches, nuts, cakes(fruitcake, etc.) and soda or champagne at midnight. Aunt Sylvia and Uncle Severino also come to join in the festivities.
Do you do anything special on New Year's Day? Besides picking up the broken dishes and cups from the night before, we eat a dish of Lentil Soup which is supposed to make you Rich in the New Year.
I feel I am already Rich. I am Blessed with a caring, loving and supportive wife named Anna, (we've been married 26 years, and last year, on our 25th, we took a
Perillo tour of Italy. We felt like we were on a second honeymoon.
I am also blessed to have my parents, Lucy and Silverio. Their outpouring of love to me made me what I am today---- A retired teacher and a children's picture book writer.
I am blessed to have a great brother, Vincent, who would do anything for me. So would my Aunt Susie. I call her the "brains` of the family."
Cousins- I have an overabundance of cousins-- Lucia and Joe, with their three children, Chelsea, Claudia and Cinthia; Madalene and Gerard, with their daughter Valerie; Olimpia and Vincenzo, with their children, Olivia, and Vincenzo, Jr.; and cousin, Gelsomina, a physical therapist, and a damn good one.
I also have Frankie, Silvio, Mima, Larry Sr., and their three children---Larry Jr.,
Nicholas, and Christopher. I've tutored Nicholas when he was in the second grade. Now, Larry Jr. and Nicholas have graduated from college and have good salaries. Christopher is doing very well in high school.
Anna and I Babysit for Olimpia's two children, Olivia and Vincenzo, Jr. WE also
Babysit for the newest baby in our family----Gianni, 2 years old, and son of Maryann and Christopher. Gianni gives us so much joy.
We are a close-knit family.
We are also blessed with so many friends through the years--our teacher friends, Sabra and Jerry from Nanuet, Tony from Pelham Parkway, Kathy from Connecticut, Connie from Riverdale, Sal and Fran from Goshen. These have been our friends for the past 30 years. I also have a friend from Freehold, New Jersey and his name is David. We went to college together, became teachers together, and then we taught in different schools. He left teaching to go into the Computer field, and he has been very successful. We've been friends now for 41 years. His wife, Susan, is a primary school teacher.
These friends mentioned are True friends. You only need 1 friend, but we've been fortunate to have so many.
A dear childhood friend of mine is Joanie. WE sort of grew up together, enjoyed the same things--movies, theatre, tennis, bowling, television award ceremonies like the Oscars, classic movies, going to restaurants, etc. Sometimes, we'd go to see 2 movies and squeeze in a play in one day. We enjoyed dancing and going to weddings. When I married Anna, Joanie and Anna became good friends, too. Joanie and Michel are good friends, and we are now Michel's friends.
Do you keep in touch with your friends from grammar school? I do. I
went to Our Lady of Pity School(now closed), and I keep in touch with several friends, Denise and Mike, Phyllis, Lorraine, Ralph, Carmela, RoseAnn and Vinny.
Dear Readers,
Your children can read about almost anything---- New Year, tradition, family,
friends, school, brothers and sisters, tutoring, Mom, Dad, cousins, babies, college,
computers, vacation and favorite activities.
The two books I recommend for this week are:
1. Today I Feel Silly and Other Moods That Make My Day- Jamie Lee Curtis.
It is illustrated by Laura Cornell, and it is published by Joanna
Cotler Books, 1998, and it is recommended for children, ages 4-8.
This story is about the different moods children experience in their lives. Moods somehow change the day.
The story is in Rhyme, and the illustrations are huge and colorful.
Here's two lines from the book:
Today I'm excited there's so much to do,
I'm going to sell cookies and lemonade too.
The book is fun to read. Each page covers a variety of moods, and there is so much activity going on each page.
The second book I recommend is: Subway-Anastasia Suen.
It is illustrated by Karen Katz, published by Viking in 2004, and it is recommended for children, ages 3 and up.
The pictures are huge and colorful. The sights and sounds of the Subway give your child a good idea of what it is like to travel on a subway.
Here are four lines from the book:
tickets in
turnstiles spin
walk, walk, walk
to the subway
Happy and Healthy and Blessed New Year to Everyone.
God bless.
Sincerely,
Ravenous Reader ( a.k.a. Frankie )
Hope you had a wonderful and healthy and happy New Year. Do you have any traditions for the New Year? My family and I do. We open our doors to let the New Year in and the Old Year out, at midnight, we throw dishes and cups out the window, we make a lot of noise by blowing our horns and whistles as we stroll through the house, and our Aunt Olimpia and Uncle Domenico come, playing the accordion and blowing the horn. Before we do all this, we sit and talk with each other at the family table, and we have cold cut sandwiches, nuts, cakes(fruitcake, etc.) and soda or champagne at midnight. Aunt Sylvia and Uncle Severino also come to join in the festivities.
Do you do anything special on New Year's Day? Besides picking up the broken dishes and cups from the night before, we eat a dish of Lentil Soup which is supposed to make you Rich in the New Year.
I feel I am already Rich. I am Blessed with a caring, loving and supportive wife named Anna, (we've been married 26 years, and last year, on our 25th, we took a
Perillo tour of Italy. We felt like we were on a second honeymoon.
I am also blessed to have my parents, Lucy and Silverio. Their outpouring of love to me made me what I am today---- A retired teacher and a children's picture book writer.
I am blessed to have a great brother, Vincent, who would do anything for me. So would my Aunt Susie. I call her the "brains` of the family."
Cousins- I have an overabundance of cousins-- Lucia and Joe, with their three children, Chelsea, Claudia and Cinthia; Madalene and Gerard, with their daughter Valerie; Olimpia and Vincenzo, with their children, Olivia, and Vincenzo, Jr.; and cousin, Gelsomina, a physical therapist, and a damn good one.
I also have Frankie, Silvio, Mima, Larry Sr., and their three children---Larry Jr.,
Nicholas, and Christopher. I've tutored Nicholas when he was in the second grade. Now, Larry Jr. and Nicholas have graduated from college and have good salaries. Christopher is doing very well in high school.
Anna and I Babysit for Olimpia's two children, Olivia and Vincenzo, Jr. WE also
Babysit for the newest baby in our family----Gianni, 2 years old, and son of Maryann and Christopher. Gianni gives us so much joy.
We are a close-knit family.
We are also blessed with so many friends through the years--our teacher friends, Sabra and Jerry from Nanuet, Tony from Pelham Parkway, Kathy from Connecticut, Connie from Riverdale, Sal and Fran from Goshen. These have been our friends for the past 30 years. I also have a friend from Freehold, New Jersey and his name is David. We went to college together, became teachers together, and then we taught in different schools. He left teaching to go into the Computer field, and he has been very successful. We've been friends now for 41 years. His wife, Susan, is a primary school teacher.
These friends mentioned are True friends. You only need 1 friend, but we've been fortunate to have so many.
A dear childhood friend of mine is Joanie. WE sort of grew up together, enjoyed the same things--movies, theatre, tennis, bowling, television award ceremonies like the Oscars, classic movies, going to restaurants, etc. Sometimes, we'd go to see 2 movies and squeeze in a play in one day. We enjoyed dancing and going to weddings. When I married Anna, Joanie and Anna became good friends, too. Joanie and Michel are good friends, and we are now Michel's friends.
Do you keep in touch with your friends from grammar school? I do. I
went to Our Lady of Pity School(now closed), and I keep in touch with several friends, Denise and Mike, Phyllis, Lorraine, Ralph, Carmela, RoseAnn and Vinny.
Dear Readers,
Your children can read about almost anything---- New Year, tradition, family,
friends, school, brothers and sisters, tutoring, Mom, Dad, cousins, babies, college,
computers, vacation and favorite activities.
The two books I recommend for this week are:
1. Today I Feel Silly and Other Moods That Make My Day- Jamie Lee Curtis.
It is illustrated by Laura Cornell, and it is published by Joanna
Cotler Books, 1998, and it is recommended for children, ages 4-8.
This story is about the different moods children experience in their lives. Moods somehow change the day.
The story is in Rhyme, and the illustrations are huge and colorful.
Here's two lines from the book:
Today I'm excited there's so much to do,
I'm going to sell cookies and lemonade too.
The book is fun to read. Each page covers a variety of moods, and there is so much activity going on each page.
The second book I recommend is: Subway-Anastasia Suen.
It is illustrated by Karen Katz, published by Viking in 2004, and it is recommended for children, ages 3 and up.
The pictures are huge and colorful. The sights and sounds of the Subway give your child a good idea of what it is like to travel on a subway.
Here are four lines from the book:
tickets in
turnstiles spin
walk, walk, walk
to the subway
Happy and Healthy and Blessed New Year to Everyone.
God bless.
Sincerely,
Ravenous Reader ( a.k.a. Frankie )
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