MOWMT: Enriching Your Story with Lisa Rogers

March 24, 2025

[Note: Click on the Title / Links to buy the books.]

You’ve combed sources for relevant factual details, woven them into an engaging text, formatted your bibliography, and you’re done. But there’s a nagging feeling—is there something you’ve missed?

Whatever your genre, expert eyes assessing every aspect of your manuscript—including the illustrations—can catch errors, lend authority to your work, and give you as a writer, confidence that you’ve gotten the story right, down to the last detail. 

Even small changes make a difference, said Gabi Snyder, author of Two Dogs on a Trike, Listen, Today, and Look. For a nonfiction picture book manuscript, soon to be out on submission, a physics education expert suggested Snyder hyphenate the words “light year,” and capitalize the word “sun.” Reviewers gave a thumbs-up to how she’d explained complicated science concepts. “It feels good to be able to say in my pitch that the manuscript's science content was deemed accurate by experts,” Snyder said.   

Mentor texts exemplify how experts can inform and sometimes transform a manuscript. Besides looking at your manuscript with the benefit of their deep knowledge, experts might also be able to provide access to photographs, documents, and other materials that might not exist in the public record. 

In honor of Women’s History Month, I dived into picture book biographies of women. Examine these mentor texts and others to glean the difference an expert’s eyes make. With your own expert eyes, you might obtain ideas for finding experts and resources for current and future projects.

Beth Anderson’s meticulous research underpins every bit of her writing—evidenced in Hiding in Plain Sight: Kate Warne and the Race to Save Abraham Lincoln, illustrated by Sally Wern Comport (Calkins Creek, 2025). Anderson weaves a compelling story without overloading it with facts—all explained in the fascinating and copious back matter. Note Comport’s detailed illustrations inspired by those of that time, and the acknowledgement that a portrait, “generally accepted” to be of Warne, is unverified. Notice the photo credits. Anderson recognizes the secretary of the Abraham Lincoln Association and a historical nonfiction author for their close reading to ensure the text’s accuracy. 

Mamie Tape Fights to Go to School: Based on a True Story, by Traci Huahn, illustrated by Michelle Jing Chan (Crown, 2024), about Tape and her family’s battle against discrimination, is based on former attorney Huahn’s deep dive into original legal documents, newspaper articles, photographs, and journals, an interview with Tape, and the assistance of Tape’s family. Huahn’s imagined dialogue classifies the book as historical fiction, but the events that prevented Tape and other Chinese children from attending schools near their homes are true. Relatives shared memories that Huahn wove into the story, and shared a family portrait that’s featured in the book’s back matter.

For the complex, dual-narrative The Fire of Stars: The Life and Brilliance of the Woman Who Discovered What Stars Are Made Of (Chronicle Books, 2023), both author Kirsten W. Larson and illustrator Katherine Roy sought expert reviews. Larson spoke with physicists and astronomers to understand the import of Payne’s contributions, and credits a National Optical Astronomy Observatory source for the manuscript review; Roy thanks experts from the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard and the Smithsonian.

Alicia D. Williams’s energetic Jump at the Sun: The True Life Tale of Unstoppable Storycatcher Zora Neale Hurston, illustrated by Jacqueline Alcántara (Atheneum, 2021), credits a professor and Hurston scholar for reading the manuscript.

I’ve been able to connect with key sources for all my picture book biographies, including family members, historians, and caretakers of a subject’s legacy. For Joan Mitchell Paints a Symphony: La Grande Vallée Suite, illustrated by Stacy Innerst (Calkins Creek, 2025), contacts at the Joan Mitchell Foundation reviewed the manuscript, helped me access images and a translation of a key text, and examined Innerst’s vibrant art for accuracy. I changed the word “series” in the proposed subtitle based on the Foundation’s expert informing me that Mitchell used “suite” to refer to this group of paintings—which was perfect given the book’s musical theme. Along with that type of support, the Foundation is promoting this book as part of its 2025 celebration of Mitchell’s centennial.

Reaching out to experts, including family members, might seem daunting, but most are happy to assist. Their work not only informs your manuscript, but honors something, or someone, they care deeply about—and your work makes it possible to share that with young readers.

PRIZE: For today’s blogpost prize, Lisa will critique a non-rhyming picture book manuscript of no more than 700 words. 

Lisa Rogers is the award-winning author of Joan Mitchell Paints a Symphony, called “simply marvelous” by Kirkus in a starred review; Beautiful Noise: The Music of John Cage, which received the Golden Kite Honor, the Julia Ward Howe Notable Book Award, and three starred reviews; 16 Words: William Carlos Williams and “The Red Wheelbarrow,” which received two starred reviews and was called “a fine introduction to a celebrated American poet” by The New York Times; and the bestselling Elvis Presley: A Little Golden Book Biography. Her next picture book biography, Woody’s Words: Woodrow Wilson Rawls and Where the Red Fern Grows, illustrated by Susan Reagan, is forthcoming in September from Calkins Creek.

She’s also authored Ronald Reagan: A Little Golden Book Biography; Hound Won’t Go; and Discover Her Art: Women Artists and Their Masterpieces; and has poems in several anthologies, including the title poem in If I Could Choose a Best Day (Irene Latham and Charles Waters, eds.). Lisa was inspired to write for children during her career as an elementary school librarian. A former news reporter and editor, Lisa lives just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, with her husband and hound. Find her at lisarogerswrites.com and @lisaljrogers on Bluesky/ IG.

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