All Things Pilothead Sound

22nd Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards

Entry Title Sally Lightfoot's Journey

Author: C. S. Walkingheart

Judge Number: 4

Entry Category: Children's Picture books

Books are evaluated on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning “needs improvement” and 5 meaning “outstanding”. This scale is strictly to provide a point of reference, it is not a cumulative score and does not reflect ranking.

*If you wish to reference this review on your website, we ask that you cite it as such: “Judge, 22nd Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards.” You may cite portions of your review, if you wish, but please make sure that the passage you select is appropriate, and reflective of the review as a whole.

In some cases, you may see special or out of place characters/symbols in your commentary. For example, you may see that a character/symbol replaces an apostrophe, copyright, and other "symbols". These substitutions occur for various reasons – and are unavoidable. They are often [programming] misinterpretations due to encoding, installed fonts, web based content/sources etc. Since the “content”[data] of the commentary is comprised of data sent from several different computers (programs, fonts etc.,) and from the internet (online entry system), you may at times see an interpretation of what had been an apostrophe, dash, quotation mark etc.

Structure, Organization, and Pacing: 5

Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar: 4

Well, I just received a judge's review of a contest I didn't remember I entered! It was evidently a Writer's Digest-thingie I entered purely on a whim, as I don't as a rule enter competitions/contests.

The review concerns "Sally Lightfoot's Journey", and considering the book was written in verse which is NOT a popular venue these days for children's books, it's quite complimentary. However, the things the judge mentions as "errors" I was fully aware of, and it's one reason I don't submit my books to publishing houses but publish them myself. The often-eccentric, quirky verse I use in picture books and the early-20th-century prosaic style of DOPS is not considered marketable by contemporary publishing houses, and I frankly couldn't care less. Which having said is not a criticism of the judge's words (which are appreciated!); it's simply that my often-uneven style is what it is and I don't particularly care how marketable it is. And, "Sally" is a quarter-century old; the original manuscript perished in a house fire. The illustrations are modern, and completely different from the very abstract watercolor originals, which were done in pale pastels! In this case, I do like the replacements better.

Anyway, for your viewing pleasure, here's the whole kit 'n caboodle.

Oh...and in reference to the judge's comment that crabs don't swim, many of them do, one of the most famous being the Atlantic Blue Crab of Chesapeake crab cake fame, which has paddle-shaped fins on its rear legs (I believe crabs are decapods).

Books are evaluated on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning “needs improvement” and 5 meaning “outstanding”. This scale is strictly to provide a point of reference, it is not a cumulative score and does not reflect ranking.

*If you wish to reference this review on your website, we ask that you cite it as such: “Judge, 22nd Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards.” You may cite portions of your review, if you wish, but please make sure that the passage you select is appropriate, and reflective of the review as a whole.

In some cases, you may see special or out of place characters/symbols in your commentary. For example, you may see that a character/symbol replaces an apostrophe, copyright, and other "symbols". These substitutions occur for various reasons – and are unavoidable. They are often [programming] misinterpretations due to encoding, installed fonts, web based content/sources etc. Since the “content”[data] of the commentary is comprised of data sent from several different computers (programs, fonts etc.,) and from the internet (online entry system), you may at times see an interpretation of what had been an apostrophe, dash, quotation mark etc.

22nd Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards

 

Structure, Organization, and Pacing: 5

Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar: 4

Production Quality and Cover Design: 5

Plot and Story Appeal: 4

Character Appeal and Development: 4

Voice and Writing Style: 4

Judge’s Commentary*:

This is a beautiful book.  The illustrations are outstanding.  I like the bordered pages.  I like how the text fits perfectly into the illustrations with different colored fonts for maximum readability.  The illustrations contain so many creatures that the adult reader can make a search game out of finding Sally on each page.  I like the glossary of other interesting sea creatures at the end of the book.  The story is slight, but it gave a great depiction of the sea life of a crab.  I like the bit of tension when Sally falls to the bottom of the ocean.  Knowing crabs don’t swim, I did wonder how she could get back into her own world.  Reading a story in verse to a young child is fun.  However, writing in rhyme is one of the hardest genres to do well.  The rhymes have to be almost perfect, which is difficult to do without forcing the rhymes by rearranging the natural order of the sentences. Normally we would say, “Grows careless, not careless grows .”   Forcing also cause us to add words we wouldn’t usually say, i.e., without delay.   The plural of fish is not fishes.  Sometimes we can get away with assonance (as in coasting/approaching or sound/down which have similar vowel sounds) or consonance (leisure/pleasure, which have similar consonant sounds).  It depends on the editor’s standards.  More important than the rhyme is the rhythm of the verse.  Writers who have read their verse many times know how to fit the syllables into the proper stressed and unstressed beats.  However, the adult reading the verse for the first time tends to stumble over inexact rhythm or reads it with strange pronunciation.  Your first two lines have the correct number of beats in each line, but they don’t match.  Sea is a stressed beat while in the second line the word country puts the stressed beat on the first syllable of the word.  That was actually the worst instance; it’s a shame it was on the first page.    I actually liked the “A child’s line” verse that you didn’t even try to rhyme better than some of exact-rhymed verse with forced elements.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and if I hadn’t been judging it for this contest, would have overlooked the minor errors that I mentioned to point out what to be aware of in future writing.  Good luck.