Beth Anderson, Children's Writer

Sometimes authors get a chance to follow up a book with another title as part of a duo, trilogy, or series. Here are a few tips from Katy Tanis sharing how she used the response from the first book to inform a second one! 

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 Lori Alexander, you’ve won Randi Sonenshine’s THE DEN THAT OCTOPUS BUILT! 

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Using Learnings from Readers When Writing a Follow-up Title

by Katy Tanis

When writing Love Under the Stars, a follow-up to Love in the Wild, I incorporated learnings from reader feedback. This feedback came from reading with my nieces and nephews, read-aloud with kids at book events, and a repeated e-mail request from parents.

Here are my top 3 tips I learned from my readers. How can you incorporate them into your books?

1. A Local Connection and an Opportunity to Share

When reading Love in the Wild at a New Jersey storytime. I mentioned that red squirrels live in NJ. The children jumped out of their chairs to share their excitement:

-“I LIVE in New Jersey.” 

-“Me too!”

-“Miss Katy I live in New Jersey too!” 

-A few pages later a younger straggler stands up “I want to tell you something…I live in New Jersey!” 

It was sweet and I hadn’t expected such an enthusiastic reaction. So when I was waffling about which owl species to include in Love Under the Stars, I opted for one that lives in New Jersey, a barn owl. With a wide distribution, the barn owl would allow a local connection for almost any storytime. I often like to feature lesser-known and obscure animals, but choosing an animal a child may be able to see in their own neighborhood allows them to make a connection to their community. It could also help fuel some children to observe local wildlife more closely in hopes of finding a featured animal.

2. An Activity

I included hearts in many of the artwork for Love In the Wild, but not all of them. I was thinking like a designer and not a child. I didn’t want to force the design and make it too ‘cheesy.’ Within days of the release, I knew this was a mistake. I was getting messages from parents asking (for their children) where the hearts were on the pages that didn’t have any. Children loved this element of the book. It’s an activity within the story, an opportunity for children to show off their searching skills and interact with the book. 

My fabulous publisher Mudpuppy, let me update the artwork for the next print run, so now every spread in Love in the Wild includes a heart. This is a great feature for read-alouds, kids love running up and finding the heart in each spread! You can bet that Love Under the Stars has a heart in every spread!

(The barn owl has a heart-shaped face which helped in my owl species decision.)

3. Add Another Layer

I get emails every month requesting the species names on the last spread of Love in the Wild for curious young readers. Since board books have limited real estate we opted for a downloadable pdf instead of traditional backmatter, where parents could find this information, but few people see this link or visit the URL. So we decided to label all the species in Love Under the Stars within the book! And since that worked well, we will also update the next print run of Love in the Wild with species names too! 

It’s worth noting that leaving out the labels in the first print runs of Love in the Wild was a blessing in disguise. By not putting it in I got valuable feedback I would not have gotten if I had included them. I now have concrete evidence that parents and children want these labels in books and can use that information when discussing these decisions with publishers on future book project.

“What other techniques have you seen in picture books that help with reader engagement?”

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