Coaching KidLit Episode 44: Art and Impact of Verse in KidLit with Guest Joan Schoettler

[00:00:00] Sharon Skinner: Welcome to Coaching KidLit, a podcast about writing and publishing good KidLit.

We dig into various aspects of writing craft through a KidLit lens and provide inspiration and clear actionable items to help writers like you move forward on their KidLit writing journeys.

I’m Sharon Skinner. Author Accelerator, certified book coach and author of Speculative Fiction and KidLit, including picture books, middle grade and young adult.

[00:00:31] Sharon Skinner: Hello listeners, it’s Sharon again and I have another special guest for you this month. Joan Schoettler is an award-winning author whose writing demonstrates a global view as her stories traverse the world and include a variety of genre. The Honey Jar: an Armenian Escape to Freedom. Is her first middle grade verse novel, which received the Commonwealth Club of California book Award Gold Medal for 2024.

[00:00:58] Joan’s picture books focus on art, nature, biographies, and diversity. She also received the Sidney Taylor Manuscript Award and the Asian Pacific American Literary Award. Her most recent publication Books Travel The World is out now.

[00:01:14] And A Doctor at Heart: the story of groundbreaking surgeon, scientist and teacher, Vivian Thomas is coming out in 2026. Joan initially taught elementary school, Then received a master’s in literacy and taught children’s literature and storytelling at California State University of Fresno.

[00:01:31] These days Joan combines her time researching, writing, and sharing her stories with children and readers of all ages. She enjoys time with her family, her friends, gardening and biking. Welcome to the program Joan.

[00:01:44] Joan Schoettler: Thank you, Sharon, for the invitation, and I’m so pleased to be here and be able to share my journey and my stories.

[00:01:50] Sharon Skinner: I’m very excited to talk to you. You have a very interesting journey and you’ve written books about some people that I find very fascinating. So let’s talk a little bit about how you went from elementary school teacher to children’s book author.

[00:02:05] Joan Schoettler: When I was teaching in elementary school, I taught for about five years, and then I thought I wanted to specialize rather than teaching across the curriculum. I wanted to specialize in something and I didn’t know if it was. Gonna be art or something dealing with nature or literature. And I chose children’s literature and as you mentioned, I received my master’s.

[00:02:23] And from that I really realized that I can tie in that art in nature that. So important to me also in writing for children. And when I began writing for children, it wasn’t something that I started, I’d never thought as a child when I was young that I wanted to be a writer. And it wasn’t until I was sort of at the end of my professional career in children’s literature teaching at the university that I began writing.

[00:02:48] There was a famous children’s author who I had lunch with and I said, where do all of your stories come from? She said well inside. And she sort of pointed her finger at me and said, they’re inside you too, Joan. And I thought, not really. So I thought about that, tucked it away for a while. And during that same time, I was teaching young children about the importance of reading books and writing.

[00:03:13] And at one point, a young little third grader said, well, Mrs. Schoettler, you’re not writing. We’re writing, but you’re not. And I remember going home and thinking, I need to write. Stories. And so it was a long journey and yet I look at all those years when I was reading to children, and then at the university I would read, read, read the, college students demonstrated the importance of reading to children in different ways to work with literature.

[00:03:35] That was my education in terms of moving into children because I learned to look at plot and character and, dialogue. All of those components that we know are so important. So I was sort of self-educating myself as I was educating the children too,

[00:03:49] Sharon Skinner: Well, it sounds like you have a deep background in that, and that’s one of the things I always encourage, our listeners and my, writing clients is to dig in and read broadly and think about the text that you are absorbing and that you’re taking in and assessing it and read more like a writer.

[00:04:08] Joan Schoettler: Exactly, and I think that’s such an important piece because it’s not until we get into those books and really learn from the professionals, the people who have come before us who are already published, who can be mentors for us. Mentor. Text is important,

[00:04:22] Sharon Skinner: Absolutely. I talk about mentor texts a lot. I think very important for us to study. And people who are familiar with me know that talk about both the mentor texts in the aspect of how you want to write and the mentor text as how you don’t want to write.

[00:04:39] So if you read something that you don’t like and you don’t like the way that that particular author does that thing, then don’t do that. Right? So, it works both ways. So reading broadly and reading Voraciously and ecclectically Really helps us to understand our place in writing and the storytelling that we wanna do by helping us to see what we like and what we don’t like as well.

[00:05:03] Joan Schoettler: That’s so true. I think that as you continue to read more, I can just begin reading, even a picture book and I get the feel whether that is a book that speaks to me. If it doesn’t speak to me, I know there are still a stack of books that will match a little bit more with what I write and what my dreams are for my writing.

[00:05:21] Sharon Skinner: Which also is great because we know that there will be an audience for what we’re doing that stories matter. All of our work. Matters to someone, and of course the other thing too is who’s your target reader? Who’s the one person who when they finish reading your book, will hug it and feel seen?

[00:05:39] Or who will get that true experience, that deep emotional experience, or that it resonates with? Because not every book is for everyone.

[00:05:47] Joan Schoettler: Absolutely. And to be able to find that book that’s going to match for a child, it’s so important and it’s important to know that. As a reader that there are going to be books out there that are meant for you too,

[00:05:59] Sharon Skinner: So you have a number of picture books that you wrote, along the way before you got to writing middle grade verse, which we’re gonna dig more into. But I, wanna talk to you a little bit about some of the picture books that you’ve written, because most of your books are basically nonfiction.

[00:06:18] Joan Schoettler: Yes. If there was a, word for me in terms of looking at, writing, it’s the curiosity of writing, the curiosity of learning about things. So with, Good Fortune in a Wrapping Cloth, my first picture book, I was at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. There was a display of Korean bojagi

[00:06:34] I had no idea what bojagi were, but they were these beautiful cloths from the 18 hundreds, but they go back much farther than that. And the women would take scraps of fabric and stitch them together in invisible stitches. And as I looked at these, I just was drawn to them thinking How were these made and who were the women that were doing it? And why did they spend so much time on it? And in one of them there was, so there was some silk screen. Photographs from women in the 18 hundreds. And so I contacted the person, and I had no idea she was sort of a worldwide known woman on bojagi here.

[00:07:09] I was just I need to know more about Bojagi but I love that opportunity that I’ve been able to meet and engage with people during part of my research. My second book was, Ruth Asawa Sculpting Life, which I love. She’s an amazing artist lived in San Francisco and created these wonderful wire sculptures that are now hanging in museums throughout the country.

[00:07:31] And I throughout the world now. And so I remember them. When I was young and when her celebration of life was announced in the newspaper. I thought I need to go to that. And while I was there sitting in this beautiful park between the De Young Museum and the San Francisco, natural History Museum, that’s when I listened to speakers and her family talking about her.

[00:07:54] And I thought, I need to write that story.

[00:07:56] Sharon Skinner: I love that you have a book out about Ruth Asawa. I think her artwork is amazing and her journey, through that is also amazing. Do you wanna talk a little bit about, the process for writing that book?

[00:08:08] Joan Schoettler: Sure. After I decided that I was going to write it, I of course did all kinds of research and it’s so, you know, you learn a certain intimacy about the person that you’re writing about because you’re wanna know about their youth. And as they were growing up, what they experienced. And I had the opportunity, not only to

[00:08:26] have a private viewing of her work, but also, to be able to meet some of her family. And one of her daughters in particular was very helpful in, being a reader for my work and. At the end, I had asked her when we were finished and the book was getting ready to be out, probably was out. I wanted to take her out to dinner or lunch in San Francisco where she lived, and she said, why don’t you come to my house for lunch?

[00:08:51] And there as I walked in, were sculptures that Ruth had done and were art. All of their family had done, all of her children are, very creative. The first school that I wanted to speak at was the Alvarado School where Ruth Assawa’s, children had gone, and when they started school, the art that they were doing was coloring within the lines and tracing and that sort of thing.

[00:09:12] And she started a program where, she would bring real artists into the school. They maybe would be there for a month or a week and they might be a dance or music or someone in ceramics or gardening. And it went into many, many schools in San Francisco and now there’s, , a School of the Performing Arts that is called the Ruth Assawa School of Performing Arts in San Francisco.

[00:09:35] And it’s amazing. It’s a high school and continuing on with her legacy and the importance of art. Community, and not only these beautiful wire sculptures, but her paintings and she’s also known as the, fountain lady of San Francisco, And I had no idea because I, I remember where, when the controversy went on, at the Ghirardelli Square, when she had a mermaid and the mermaid nursing, and it was like, whoa, that maybe isn’t what needs to be there.

[00:10:00] And yet then it, moved forward. And her, work is. Amazing. She was really an amazing person .

[00:10:05] Sharon Skinner: And I was already a fan and then I read your book and I learned so much more from a picture book. I love that I can learn so much more from picture books, so I love that you did the deep research and that you included all of that additional information in there. That was really exciting for me. I really appreciate hearing that you started in Picture Book and then moved into novels in Verse, because to me they’re very similar in some ways, but they’re also very different. Do you wanna talk a little bit about how you went from picture books and then decided, oh, I’m gonna write this middle grade novel.

[00:10:42] What was the process that took place for you in making that bit of a leap?

[00:10:47] Joan Schoettler: I did not think in terms of, I want to step into a middle grade novel. I had written years ago when I received the Sidney Taylor Manuscript Award. It was for a book called The Service Coin, and when I first wrote it, I wrote it as a picture book and one of the women in my writing groups said, Joan, there’s too much information in this.

[00:11:05] You need to write this as a middle grade novel. And I remember where we were, we talked about this recently and I said, Kelly, I don’t have enough words in me to write a middle grade novel. And I was, being so honest, I thought, I can’t do that picture book. I can do. So for the Honey Jar, this middle grade novel, it’s about, the Armenian genocide.

[00:11:23] So it’s a big topic. And when I went back recently, getting ready for a presentation. I looked at my first draft it was a picture book. I thought, well, this, is, too much. I went back to Kelly’s words and I, moved forward and I wrote it first, in prose and I had an agent sending it out and it wasn’t going anywhere, so it came back and I had listened to a, podcast that said, when you’re writing, try it in a totally different way, you know, if you don’t think it’s working.

[00:11:51] So I thought, this is my opportunity to try it a different way. And so that’s when I stepped into the verse piece and within the first page, I knew that this needed to be a verse novel. It was just stronger, more powerful. I think the language had to be tight and strong

[00:12:08] so it was really the appearing and a partnership between writing for middle grade and moving into verse.

[00:12:14] Sharon Skinner: That’s a great point. So you felt like you were a tight, concise writer already. I only have so many words in me is what you said and I see that in picture book that many people struggle with that conciseness and clarity at that level for that target reader.

[00:12:32] But I also understand that the Armenian genocide, I mean that is such a big topic and such a, tough topic for that age reader. So I can understand that you shifted to middle grade, but. Trying out the waters in different, formats is always important for us to figure out what’s going to work for a particular book.

[00:12:54] The structure, the viewpoint, and even the type of writing that we’re doing is so critical to getting just the right voice and the right direction and the right mood and tone for that book. But it sounds to me like verse because it is so concise and clear and it has to be more powerful, because verse is poetry.

[00:13:18] It’s just not rhyming. It’s doesn’t have the rhythm necessarily. Sometimes it does, but it’s not rhyming poetry, but it’s still. Poetry in the fact that you have to break everything down into those concise statements, those phrases that are the most powerful. But it sounds like you have an affinity for that kind of writing.

[00:13:39] Joan Schoettler: I would say in the last two years, maybe two and a half years even the picture books that I’m working on are more poetic. I’m not saying they’re written in verse because it’s not verse, but it still has this tightness that I find that works. And, when you’re working in verse, it’s important that, each of the poems that you write can be standalone as well as that they have to work within

[00:14:02] the format of the story, and I think that’s very important. And having the differences in the length of the lines and variation on the page. I think of Kwame Alexander, how there are times when he just. pours his energy into certain pages with words and words all over the page. And I look a lot at Marguerite Engel’s work and the depth of her poetry and how she’s just such a wordsmith, and my first introduction to it was out of the Dust by Karen Hess. And if I’ve read that book once, I’ve read it 20 times. I fell in love with it when it first came out, and I remembered her saying that the white space on the page allows the reader to breathe.

[00:14:42] And I think that with The Honey Jar, there are parts in it, many parts in it that the reader needs to be able to stop. And breathe and, and be able to not have everything so strong. Even just the scenes when there are great emotions that just being able to use one word instead of an entire sentence seems to work really well.

[00:15:02] And it was interesting because when I had my first, book launch and there were mainly adults there and a lot of them had never seen a book in verse. So they, said, why did you write it like this? You know, it was just something new. And then, yeah, the comments that came were just really very special.

[00:15:19] Sharon Skinner: I think that’s really wonderful. My background is in poetry, so I started as a poet and moved into novels later in life. And so poetry and short story, all the conciseness that goes with that. And then when I started writing novels, I overwrote, which is really interesting And then I had to learn how to not do that.

[00:15:39] It was like, oh, I have all this wide open space, but for writing in verse, as you say, the idea that you need that white space and you need to breathe, especially that kind of topic that you’re writing about in The Honey Jar, that we need that time to take a breath and to sit back and get space.

[00:16:00] So that just makes so much sense.

[00:16:02] Joan Schoettler: And now when I go back and I, looked at the first version that was in prose. It feels like, , just , a heavy brick. And this, story feels like it, flows in a different way and it has, different message and whether you have a third or fourth grader reading it or I’ve had an opportunity in a court school, so I heard the comments from these young men who were age 10 to 18 who’d had hard lives, and their comments were just amazing that they were able to see in a book somebody else who had a very different hard life than maybe with what they have had and shared it in Armenian schools.

[00:16:37] And, they have heard the stories of their grandparents or great grandparents. And so then to have a book like this written is, pretty amazing.

[00:16:46] Sharon Skinner: That type of reader engagement is so fulfilling as a writer, isn’t it? To hear that, someone has really, truly connected on a deep level with the words that we’ve put out into the world, I think that’s fabulous.

[00:16:59] Joan Schoettler: Their words are the gift, you know, when somebody has read something and appreciated what you’ve written to me, that’s. Worth all the, hours of research and curiosity and, writing and rewriting and editing and re-editing

[00:17:11] Sharon Skinner: Yeah, that’s the return on investment, right? Is that that reader connection?

[00:17:15] As writers, we’re all. Always looking for that. We may be introverts, but we’re still seeking connection. Would you tell us a little bit more about this opportunity that you had to work with these young men?

[00:17:26] Joan Schoettler: Yes, a, Fresno County, person who’s head of the libraries had purchased the book for all of their librarians, and so I gave. Presentation. A woman came up to me after and she said, I am so glad you read this book. She said, I am Armenian and I haven’t heard stories like this.

[00:17:42] And she teaches at this court school and she works with a group of students who voluntarily meet. They were meeting twice a week, at the morning before school started they read, maybe eight books a year, 10 books. I’m not sure how many. She said, would you be interested in, doing a Zoom with them?

[00:18:00] I said, of course. So we set a date and before that she told them, I have this book and the author’s going to speak in 10 days, and so let’s start reading it. And we’ll probably get maybe a third of the way through. And they said, what if we met every morning, If we came every morning, could we get all the way through the book? I mean, to me that was like, whoa. These young men got up got there an hour early and they finished it. So I had asked her to have them write questions about it,, that they would have for me on Wednesday. but I also have to say that she brought Armenian food for them. So they were able to taste the baklava and the grape leaves and all these different things. And I love that. I mean, she just put her heart into that and made this. A great experience for them. And so when we met, they were, you know, I couldn’t see their faces, so they were all ahead of me and I was on a split screen between my presentation and myself and just, you know, their comments there questions.

[00:18:55] And there was one boy who said, I’m going to keep this and I wanna share it. with my brother when he grows up. And I wanna see what his thoughts are on it. and I thought that was amazing. anyway, the, comments were great and I was so impressed. Later, about three weeks later, I was at a fundraiser and I saw the teacher there and I said, oh, what brings you here? And she said, one of our students from the class is here. And he was presenting something and when I went over, he recognized me, And he was just so warm, so engaging, so appreciative. And that was just one of my very, very favorite that, that, the. book move forward in, in that way,

[00:19:35] Sharon Skinner: That’s joyful. I, love hearing that story. Let’s dig in a little bit now into the craft of verse. when you’re writing a novel in verse, what are some of the key methods that you use to make sure that you are getting what you need on the page and leaving the space for the reader to breathe as well?

[00:19:55] Joan Schoettler: You mentioned that you overwrite sometimes. You know, and I know I do. So , with this book I had the prose, what I pulled from that were just the kernels. I sort of had to get my mindset into what is the richest part of this, what part of the story is most important, and then to concisely. Look at the words and constantly tighten and tighten and keeping in mind that the fewer words that you sometimes use can really punctuate, what’s going on. For instance this is a story based on a true story. And there was a young boy whose mother, gave him charge of three young sisters. As they were fleeing, the parents could not flee because at that point the mother was too sick.

[00:20:38] So she sent her children off with a grandmother and an aunt and uncle, So this is what the father is saying as the children are leaving, he tells his brother, thank you for taking my children, says Papa, we’ll catch up with you. now, this is a young 8-year-old boy. I clasp my hands over my head. Anxiety and fear swirl within. Go. Now. Papa rubs his hand over his mustache. Be brave, be strong. Be safe. Placing his hands on our heads. He gives each of us his blessing. So if I had written it out, instead of in verse, I’d write, be brave, be strong, be safe. But when you visually take that out and put it two words at a time, I just think it, it makes it so much stronger.

[00:21:25] Sharon Skinner: That’s the beauty of poetry, right? Is that you can lay it out on the page. That’s the glory of verse that you can emphasize. And what’s interesting is that. Even when you’re writing a novel, the way that you paragraph where you put the lines, that can emphasize what’s going on or what’s being said in a novel because you get some freedom, but in verse you get even more ability to do that.

[00:21:49] Joan Schoettler: exactly. It is an invitation and you realize you’re really getting at the heart. And I, I remember there’s an aunt and uncle in the story, and when you were doing the, editing and my publisher said, um, I think we need more emotion from the aunt and uncle, because I, didn’t realize that in a case like this, immediately I went from what I had written to thinking I am the aunt. I’m in this situation and I had to dig down inside myself in terms of how would I respond to my niece and nephew if they were coming to me with this and in another place when the children are leaving the mother. And I thought, I need To really get in and think about what, the words are, how would I feel, and what would that experience be?

[00:22:35] Sharon Skinner: and getting emotion on the page you have to dig deep. And especially when you’re doing novel in verse, I think that you have to be even more thoughtful about the specific word choice, the nuance of those words, how you’re stringing them together, because you don’t get the room to show and tell as much about that emotionality.

[00:22:58] You’ve got to get it in those few words.

[00:23:01] Joan Schoettler: Right. There was a fourth grade class who had read the book and they did annotations all the way through the book. And so when I came to, meet with them. There were four children in particular that I focused on looking at what they had taken notes on.

[00:23:14] And it was so interesting because one boy said, when I read this, you only have the important words here, not the things that aren’t important.

[00:23:22] Sharon Skinner: I love that.

[00:23:23] Joan Schoettler: I loved it because maybe if he picked up a, regular book It was too overwhelming, too much, but this is fast paced. It is short. And it’s right there for them to feel those emotions And, experiences.

[00:23:37] I loved it because each child, their personalities just shown by what they took out of it. And one girl said. I have a cat. This little boy had a dog in the story. I have a cat, or I have a sister, or I have a brother. Or once my mother was gone and I was worried about her. So this little girl was pulling all of her emotions and feelings and personal interactions into the story, . one Said, you talk a lot about food. He said, why do you talk about food? There so much food in the story. And I thought, first of all. These children are hungry. No, didn’t say starving. They, they’re just, there wasn’t food. So they’re very hungry. And when you’re hungry, you think about food, but I also talked about the Armenian culture. And food is so important. it’s their gift to whoever enter their home or is sitting across from them at the table. And so I think that was an important piece

[00:24:27] Sharon Skinner: I wanna go back to something that the little boy said about you only used the important words, we have over the last few years had kind of an explosion of novels in verse, so in the last decade or so, we’ve seen a lot more novels in verse and novels in verse for middle grade .

[00:24:47] And I’d love to hear as you’re an educator, why do you think that is?

[00:24:52] Joan Schoettler: Oh, lemme just talk first maybe from a teacher standpoint, because a teacher can take a. novel in verse, and if she’s she or he is reading it to the class, it’s easier to find stopping places. Right. And it’s easier to stop when you read something and be able to ask the children, there’s an immediacy in terms of let’s talk about that feeling or that emotion.

[00:25:15] I think a lot of times in verse those feelings and emotions are right on the page. They’re just. Right there on a, a platter before the children. I think that’s one thing. I also think that poetry is often a difficult piece for a lot of teachers to teach. I remember seeing that when I was working with teachers and by having a, book in verse.

[00:25:37] there’s the poetry right there. It’s just with each. Little poem, you can talk about each one and how it makes you feel and, what do you think it’s saying and listening to different children having different responses to it. So I think that part is really important and to be able to extend that, understanding your poetry beyond a poem on a page and knowing that there isn’t one answer to what that poem means. There are many, many answers based on prior knowledge and what the child is bringing to the page and experiences that they’ve had.

[00:26:09] Sharon Skinner: What’s great about it and what can really engage young readers is that they’re getting an entire story. They’re getting to spend time with the characters but then we can parse it out into these smaller components, these smaller poems, but in a way that is more accessible rather than, oh, here’s this long. poem by this author, and we want you to understand what this author’s trying to say in a poem. Now you’re getting the ability to break apart this wonderful story, and parse it out into these smaller bits that are more digestible, for young people.

[00:26:47] Joan Schoettler: For teachers because it’s written like that or because just exactly what you were explaining, that the teacher can then. Ask the children more specifically, thoughts and feelings and, comments. I wanna go back to the same boy because when he, when he had his book, it was covered, covered with post-its, with all of the questions that he had in addition to probably having a hundred Post-Its inside on everything. But he said I had to ask you a question on the very first poem. It starts. One Autumn at our home at the edge of Kars, papa’s, horses and cattle feed nearby. Mama’s bees make honey. my sisters leapfrog over each other and I shoot marbles with my cousins and friends. He said, did you know when you wrote that, that all of those ideas are woven throughout your story? I thought that was , so amazing, he talked about, that the father had horses and cattle and, that was woven in the story. And the mother had honeybees and when the children left, she gave them a jar of honey. It was her only gift to give them and then you wanna show what the symbolism of, but the honey jar was.

[00:27:52] And then I laughed, because one boy said, why wasn’t it a jar of pickles?

[00:27:56] Sharon Skinner: Kids are great. They ask the most interesting questions about story.

[00:27:59] Joan Schoettler: They do. They really do.

[00:28:01] Sharon Skinner: That’s very astute for that one young man to have seen the thematic components , the golden threads that were woven through the narrative.

[00:28:08] Joan Schoettler: And he had so many, I, wanna know where he’s going to be 20 years from now, because his insights as a 10-year-old were amazing.

[00:28:14] Sharon Skinner: So is there anything else that we haven’t covered about writing in verse that you’d like to impart to our listeners ?

[00:28:21] Joan Schoettler: I would say to make sure if, you’re not writing in verse I think either you, know, in your heart or in your experience what’s going to work. And for me, I can only speak from my experience, but when I took a step into writing from verse, it just. Tightened my writing so much, it gave me, a challenge that I never thought that I would take or had never been presented to me before. And I, love that challenge and as I mentioned before, after doing this, and then with the three picture books manuscripts that I’ve written, I just see that my writing has made a change, that there’s maybe more of me in me in it, I guess.

[00:28:59] Sharon Skinner: I love that. Yeah.

[00:29:00] So a little bit about your upcoming books are those picture books or middle grade or verse, what will those be?

[00:29:08] Joan Schoettler: These two are both picture books and , one for sure was written before I did the verse novel and, the one that’s coming, that’s out now. Books Travel the World Is, a picture book so it’s a story of librarians who are determined to get books in the hands of children throughout the world. And these people live in Thailand and Ethiopia and Norway and China. And we know that there are places where not all communities have libraries and that not all families can purchase books. So these dedicated, they may be librarians, former teachers, they could be just people who love books. Who take books to children by elephant, by donkey, by boat, by camel, by bicycle. And so each, country is a double page spread. And so my text in there is, just talking about, How they get there and why it’s important, and then what the children discover when they read it. So when the children are reading, somebody will say, listen to this.

[00:30:07] Children discover a walk in the forest, musical instruments and outer space. So imagine a. Blanket placed on a desert in Kenya with these different kinds of books placed there. And the children each are choosing something that they want, and then cheerful and thankful for books the children call out. One more story, please.

[00:30:29] So I had the neatest experience. There’s a five-year-old girl across the street and she came over to pick flowers one day. And I just received the book and I’d been reading it out on the table and she said, what’s this? So we sat down and read it. And. So the first time it said, one more story, please. The second one, she’s mouthing it. She’s not saying it by the third one. She’s whispering. One more story please. And it’s, I thought that’s the magic of children, right? I mean, it was so interesting that she picked up on that. So she saw that sort pattern or thread,

[00:31:00] Sharon Skinner: that’s fabulous. Well Joan, this has been great we could just go on and on.

[00:31:04] Joan Schoettler: I, know we could.

[00:31:05] Sharon Skinner: But as you know, we always try to give our listeners, something actionable that they can take away from the podcast and from what we’ve been talking about.

[00:31:15] So what action item do you have for our listeners today?

[00:31:19] Joan Schoettler: My action item is to challenge you or to invite you to take maybe just a chapter of what you’ve read in prose and try it in verse. Or take just part of it and see, and I’d, I’d love to hear back in some way in terms of, how that worked out. verse is not for everything. It’s not for every book, because the character, the story that you’re writing needs to be something you can see in verse and you have to be able to write the character’s voice and experiences in that way. But I think because I had that experience and that opportunity. It was wonderful for me. I just would invite, someone to do that too.

[00:31:56] That would be the, challenge.

[00:31:57] Sharon Skinner: I love that you phrased it as an invitation as well as a challenge but I also really appreciate the idea of how that can inform your writing. So even if you take this chapter and you write it in verse, and maybe it doesn’t work for you, and maybe that’s not your thing, but you’ve, given yourself the opportunity to explore that and how that can inform your novel writing and the way that you use language. So I think that’s a fabulous action item. My action item today is going to go back way early in the podcast to something else that you said, and I will say, find something that you are curious about, that you are passionate about and find a way. To write about that preferably in verse so that you can practice versifying as well as finding something that you are maybe very passionate about. The idea that you have explored people’s lives, like Ruth Asawa and Vivian Thomas, and

[00:33:00] The truth behind the honey jar, but in a way that makes it accessible to young readers, is super valuable. And I would say to our listeners, especially those who are interested in anything that’s nonfiction or truth that could lead them into writing a story about that. i’m really just jumping off on two things that you’ve given us today. I so appreciate Joan speaking to you and having this opportunity to share with our listeners about your journey.

[00:33:32] Now, where else can we find you, Joan, out in the world? You said that you would love to hear from listeners if they try your action item.

[00:33:40] So where are places that we can find you out in the world?

[00:33:45] Joan Schoettler: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and shortly on, blue Sky, because that’s one of my, goals.

[00:33:51] Sharon Skinner: And you’re Joan Dot Schoettler or Joan schoettler in all of those places

[00:33:56] Joan Schoettler: Yes.

[00:33:57] Sharon Skinner: and you have a website, and that’s also joan shoettler.com.

[00:34:02] Joan Schoettler: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:34:03] Sharon Skinner: And it’s J-O-A-N-S-C-H-O-E-T-T-L-E-R, Joan shoettler.com. Thank you again for being here, for sharing your knowledge and your journey with us. I so appreciate it.

[00:34:17] Joan Schoettler: Well, thank you for the opportunity, Sharon. It’s been wonderful chatting with you and i’m so glad for what you’re doing for readers and writers, so thank you.

[00:34:26] Sharon Skinner: Thank you so much, and bye for now.

[00:34:28] Joan Schoettler: Yes, take care

[00:34:30] Sharon Skinner: We hope you enjoyed this episode of Coaching KidLit, a writing and book coaching podcast for writers who want to level up their KidLit writing game.

[00:34:37] Sharon Skinner: For more episodes check out coachingkidtlit.com and to discover what a book coach could do for you, visit my website at bookcoachingbysharon.com