The Story of a Story

Help young readers become young writers with this sweet picture book about a child finding the words to tell his own story!

If you've ever tried to write a story of your own, you know it's not as easy as it looks. Words get tangled, pencils get broken, piles of pages get crumpled up. It's so much easier just to read all the lovely stories other people have written. . . . But their stories aren't your stories, and your tale is worth telling.

A mostly empty page
Then another.
And still another.
There are squiggles.
There are doodles.
But the words won't come.

With the gentle reassurance of experience, two-time SCBWI Golden Kite Award Winner Deborah Hopkinson writes a story that encourages persistence, and celebrates the strength of every child's unique voice and the story they have to tell. Charming illustrations by Hadley Hooper detail the child's efforts-- and the stroke of inspiration that helps him get going.

This is the perfect picture book for kids who love stories and have big ideas of their own. Young readers who don't know where to start will be encouraged by the gentle humor, and a page of story-starting ideas offers the opportunity to expand the experience beyond the book.

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
A CCBC Choice


Author: Deborah Hopkinson
Publisher: Neal Porter Books
Published: 11/09/2021
Pages: 40
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 9.13h x 8.98w x 0.47d
ISBN: 9780823444915
Audience: Ages 4-8


Review Citation(s):
School Library Journal 09/01/2021 pg. 76
Bulletin of Ctr for Child Bks 11/01/2021
Kirkus Reviews 10/15/2021
Publishers Weekly 11/01/2021
Booklist 11/01/2021 pg. 73
Horn Book Magazine 01/01/2022 pg. 86

About the Author
Deborah Hopkinson is as award-winning of picture books, fiction, and nonfiction for young readers. In 2013 she received a Robert F. Sibert Honor and YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award honor for Titanic: Voices from the Disaster. She has won the SCBWI Golden Kite Award for Picture Book Text Twice, for A Band of Angels and Apples to Oregon. Sky Boys, How They Built the Empire State Building, was a Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor awardee. She lives near Portland, Oregon.

Hadley Hooper is a fine artist and the illustrator of many distinctive picture books, including The Iridescence of Birds, by Patricia Maclachlan, Another Way to Climb a Tree, by Liz Garton Scanlon, and Two Brothers, Four Hands, by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan. She lives in Denver, Colorado.