If You Want to Write a StoryIf You Want to Write a Story

Nothing is quite as exciting and frustrating as chasing a story idea out of your head and onto the page. Award-winning author and illustrator Jeff Mack should know— he’s been telling stories since the second grade. With How to Write a Story, he brings the writing process to life for the next generation of yarn spinners. “Ideas are hiding anywhere,” our narrator notes as we open on a pensive mouse at his writing desk. This proves true a moment later, when a stuffed bunny leaps from a shelf and out of the house, straight to a cardboard box spaceship. “Writing a story is like traveling through space,” we continue as mouse and bunny do just that: “It may take you a long time. You may not always know where you’re going.” Once landed on an alien planet, the adventure continues to the bottom of the sea, the stomach of a big fish, and the lair of a killer robot. Each thrilling beat illustrates a tool in the fiction writer’s kit. Whether used in the classroom or gifted to the talented youngster in your life, How to Write a Story is timeless, multifaceted, and empowering.