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A guide to getting published

This month’s free professional development resource from Golden Apple is a step-by-step guide to getting your words—and your students’—into print. It was provided by 1997 Golden Apple Fellow and published children’s book author Cheryl Chapman. Please visit the Golden Apple website to download your copy!

A note from Cheryl:

When I was working as a Head Start teacher in the early 1980’s, I was frustrated with the lack of diverse characters in the picture books in my classroom.  I’d been a writer all of my life, heading up The Scribblers Club as a Roosevelt High School student in Des Moines, Iowa, and writing poetry for friends and magazines, editorials for newspapers, liturgies for church, and plays for various organizations.  I admit it:  I always knew I could write for kids, but took that talent for granted.  I was the geek who was so thrilled whenever we were assigned 500-word essays in grade school.  I entertained my little brothers and sisters and their friends with my Dr. Seuss take-offs.  When Kennedy died, I wrote a poem that made my whole school start to cry again.  I knew the power of playing with words.  So, along with my hippie-era penchant for righting wrongs, as well as my civil rights work, my little 3 and 4 year- old Head Start students finally gave me the motivation for getting some stories out of my heart and into publication.  Around that time, our local NAACP president befriended me.  I think it no coincidence that Cynthia Davis Brown was also a retired 3rd grade Chicago Public School teacher.  She took me, like a student, like a daughter, under her wings and saw that I developed the faith and know-how to do more than simply self-publish my manuscripts.  She has been the angel at my shoulder ever since, and I hope she’s proud.

So, that’s how I got here! No matter how you’ve come to the writing life, and no matter how your students get there, if you’ve never tried to get something published before, these pages should help you!  You will learn the basics:

• How to assemble your story
• How to find a publisher
• How to submit work to a publisher
• What to do in the meantime with your thirty gazillion unpublished works
• How to enable your students’ writing addictions as well!

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