Category Archives: Writing Tips

Back Matter Break Down: Interview with Annette Whipple

Welcome to the Back Matter Break Down! Today we get to enjoy this interview with author Annette Whipple! She has so much great information to share with us as she has tackled back matter in so many of her non-fiction books. We are in for a treat because she’s going to share about several of her books today. Let’s dive in!

How do you decide what information will end up in the back matter versus in the main text of your non-fiction picture books?

As I’m writing, I can’t include all the wonderful facts I find in the main text. I use the interesting facts that don’t fit and consider if they’d work as back matter. I also want to include a way for the reader to interact with the topic more, so I often include hands-on activities as well as additional resources to learn more.

Tell us about the back matter revision process. Why do changes occur? What contributions and changes come as a result of working with editors?

I love back matter, so the revision process often includes me writing lots and letting my editor know that it doesn’t all need to be included. In a picture book, it’s important to leave room in the page count for it. I try to envision what it might look like (with photographs and/or illustrations), but sometimes something needs to be removed.

In The Truth About series, there are a lot of photos used alongside the text with some illustrated and graphic elements. How does your back matter text look when you are ready to submit? Do you use illustration notes?

This series is beautifully designed. My illustration notes are fairly limited throughout the book, including the back matter. In the book Ribbit! The Truth About Frogs, I wanted to highlight cool frog species. I titled it “Freaky, Funky Frogs.” After a brief introduction, I wrote a sentence about each frog and what set it apart from others. At the end of this section of back matter, I included an illustration note. (My illustration notes are in gray text and brackets.)

[Design note: Insert appropriate photograph of each species.]

The 228 words I wrote became a two-page spread seen here.

Ribbit! The Truth About Frogs actually had eight pages of back matter (plus another page with my author bio and photo on it). That’s a lot for a picture book.

Is your back matter aimed for kid readers or adults? What do you hope readers will take away after reading your back matter content?

At this point, my back matter has always been aimed at the kid reader instead of the adult. I write it with the purpose of helping the reader immerse themselves in the topic even more.

How do you come up with the projects that appear in the back matter for The Truth About Series? 

I was once a teacher, so I love coming up with hands-on ideas. I had a lot of trouble brainstorming a science-focused craft or activity for Meow! The Truth About Cats so I turned to Pinterest. There I found a great idea and made it my own. You wouldn’t believe how much fun it is learning if your cat is right-pawed or left-pawed!

What tips can you offer picture book writers for writing back matter?

Go beyond the bibliography/resources and glossary. Make the back matter something the reader will engage with. I have a whole blog post about back matter. https://www.annettewhipple.com/2022/01/writers-questions-about-back-matter.html

Are there resources or comp titles you can share that would be helpful for writer’s wanting to learn more about back matter? 

I’ve heard some authors use my series, The Truth About, for inspiration. However, I think borrowing 25 recently published books from your local library is a great place to start.  

Thank you, Annette! There’s so much good information here for anyone interested in back matter!

Please support Annette!

https://www.annettewhipple.com/ is full of resources for writers, both published and unpublished.

Follow Annette:

@AnnetteWhippleBooks on Instagram and Facebook

@AnnetteWhipple Twitter/X and Blusky

Thank you for reading!

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Writing Tips: Mentor Texts

I have learned so much about the craft of writing during this last year. I’m no expert, but I thought it would be fun to share some tips and tricks that have been the most helpful to me for improving my skills. Hopefully some of you will find this helpful.

One of the first things I learned about when I joined SCBWI was the concept of mentor texts. A mentor text is a published book that you study and use as a reference while writing your own book. It could be a book that has a similar topic or theme to the one you are writing. Or it could be written in a similar voice or point of view that you are trying to use. Obviously the goal is not to copy another book, but it can be helpful to see a finished product when you are still working with pen and paper or a blank computer screen.

My most recent manuscript is about what it’s like being a pastor’s kid. For my mentor texts, I looked at several other pictures books that were about church so I could see how people wrote about attending church. These mentor texts helped me be aware of some trends with picture books for the Christian market. A lot of these books were rhyming. My book is not. I noodled around with making my book a rhyming story, but ultimately I decided against it. But now I know that I might be competing with books that rhyme and that might be a preference for publishers and agents. If I decide to retool at any point, I know that rhyming might be the way to go.

I also looked at a few books that featured kids talking about their parent’s job. I wanted to see examples of writing from a kids point of view about working parents. This helped me figure out how much I wanted to center the child’s experience.

There was one mentor text that didn’t fit into any of these categories, but in the end it was the book I looked to the most in this process. It is a lovely book called IN MY MOSQUE by M. O. Yuksel and Hatem Aly. In the book, a child takes readers through their day at the mosque. The writing is very lyrical, but not rhyming, and it engages all five senses in its descriptions of the community, rituals and activities in the mosque.

This book really showed me how to make my writing less didactic and more sensory. Yuksel made the experience of the mosque come alive to me as someone who has never been to a mosque. I wanted to bring that approach to my story about a specific childhood experience that many people have never had for themselves. And the book really stays faithful to showing a kid’s point of view which is what I want to do in my book.

One trick I learned with mentor texts is to type them out. This is relatively easy to do with picture books. With IN MY MOSQUE, I sat down and typed up the whole text of the book. I made paragraphs to represent page turns to get a sense of how the book was structured and how ideas were grouped in the book. This way I was able to see how text looked on a typed page versus in an illustrated book. I then used that as a reference to help me see where my page breaks could be and how to give my story a sense of flow and structure with the not-yet existing illustrations in mind.

It might seem a little ironic that for my book about a pastor’s kid, the most helpful mentor text was a book about a kid going to the mosque. But other showing different faiths, IN MY MOSQUE was the perfect book to study for POV, structure, use of language, and its approach to depicting religious practices and communities.

It’s fun to discover new books and understand them in a deeper way, and mentor texts really allow you to do that while improving your writing.