Book Review: It’s a Bunny-Eat-Bunny World

It’s a Bunny-Eat-Bunny World, a writer’s guide to surviving and thriving in today’s competitive children’s book market, by Olga Litowinsky (1936-2003), 234 pages.  This is the one “How To Write” book that I’ve borrowed from the library a couple times.  Maybe I should buy a copy?  It opens with an interesting history on children’s books, then goes on to provide information on the entire process: writing, editing, submitting, and marketing children’s books.  The book includes some very important counter-intuitive information such as, “When submitting a story, especially an unsolicited one, generally do not include illustrations even with your picture book because many/most publishers have in-house or favorite illustrators.”

The biggest weakness of the book is that it was written at the turn of the century (2000, not 1900 - wow that phrase makes me feel old).  Therefore it says very little about e-books or e-publishing.  That said, Litowinsky shares her extensive knowledge of the children’s book genre’ gained as the author of eight children’s books and a former executive editor of children’s books at Simon & Schuster.  The book is well worth a read, particularly for us rookies trying to break into writing children’s books.

Chris4Gkids