Case study · Children's · 2024
ASIN B0CTYHRP7Q
A 487-word picture book about a family bedtime ritual became a 2024 SCBWI Crystal Kite finalist for the Pacific West region. Watercolor illustrations by a roster illustrator paired to the manuscript.
Inside the project
Working shots from this engagement — interview sessions, manuscript pages, cover concepts, launch day.
The first call ran 25 minutes longer than it was meant to because Elena had to explain, three different ways, that 1,800 words was not a picture book. The Bremers had been told the book was “lovely” by friends, family, and one well-meaning agent who didn’t sell into the picture book category. Nobody had told them the word count was disqualifying.
Cutting 1,800 to 500 is not editing. It is rewriting around the same emotional spine. The original opened with three pages of setup about the parents’ day. Elena cut that entirely. The book now opens on the child, on the bed, asking the question that becomes the through-line. The setup turned out to be unnecessary; the child does not need to know what the parents’ day was like. The child is the reader.
The Crystal Kite is voted on by SCBWI members. The two qualities reviewers flagged in their public votes: the read-aloud rhythm (every line lands at a page turn) and the illustration-text negotiation (the words deliberately leave space for the watercolor to do work). Both were structural decisions made in week 3, not in week 22.
“Elena read our manuscript out loud to her daughter on a Zoom call. Her daughter said 'this part is slow.' That was more useful than any feedback we'd had in eight months.”
Cover rounds
The shortlist we presented to the author before round-one revisions. The selected concept is the second in the strip.
Project facts
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