If There's No Hook, There's No Book

By Melissa Stewart


Let’s face it. Kids today have busy lives and a lot of entertainment options. If we want them to read our books, we have to get their attention. We have to make them curious. Really curious.

Look at these three book covers:

Each of these expository nonfiction picture books entices young readers with a strong hook—a unique, engaging way of looking at a concept—that’s obvious even in their titles.

That hook makes kids curious. They immediately start asking questions, and they decide to read the book so they can discover the answers.

In some cases, a hook makes a complex concept or process more relatable to young readers. It shows how the information in the book connects to a child’s everyday life or experience in the world.

A hook can also give readers the opportunity to think about a familiar topic from a unique perspective. It may encourage them to question what they thought they knew. It may even lead them to reconsider their view of how the world works and their place in it.

When I show students the cover of No Monkeys, No Chocolate during school visits, hands instantly shoot into the air. Kids are dying to know how monkeys are related to their favorite dessert.

Similarly, the title of An Egg Is Quiet provokes curiosity, and as readers explore all the different ways author Dianna Hutts Aston personifies an egg’s characteristics, they gain a new appreciation for something that might otherwise seem so common and familiar.

The first thing a child (or an adult) does upon reading the title of Never Smile at a Monkey is ask, “Why not?” Then they open the book to find out.

According to author Steve Jenkins, "Never Smile at a Monkey: And 17 Other Important Things to Remember was inspired by that phrase popping into my head when I read that macaques sometimes react violently to a human smile (a display of teeth). From the beginning, I knew that I’d base the book on a series of similar admonitions (never clutch a cane toad, never cuddle a cub, never touch a tang).”

The concept for No Monkeys, No Chocolate suddenly popped into my mind, too, but only after I’d been working on the manuscript for years.

 

And that’s one of the challenges of writing expository nonfiction—coming up with just the right way to frame the information can take time. How long? Here are some stats:
 

Title	Amount of Time
Can an Aardvark Bark?	6 years
Feathers: Not Just for Flying	8 years
No Monkeys, No Chocolate	10 years
Pipsqueaks, Slowpokes, and Stinkers: Celebrating Animal Underdogs	7 years
A Place for Butterflies	5 years
Seashells: More than a Home	6 years
Under the Snow	5 years

To come up with a great hook, writers need to thoroughly digest their research and make their own meaning. It’s so, so important to be patient during this process because an irresistible hook involves finding your own unique and intriguing lens for viewing the information.

The good news is that when you finally stumble onto the perfect hook, all the pieces suddenly fall into place. You’ll know exactly what your manuscript needs to be and how to achieve your vision. And the result will be a captivating book that only you could have written.

Here are a dozen picture books to read and study as you think about crafting the hook of your nonfiction book:

• Beware of the Crocodile by Martin Jenkins
• Bone by Bone: Comparing Animal Skeletons by Sara Levine and T. S. Spookytooth
• Did You Burp? How to Ask Questions . . . or Not! by April Pulley Sayre and Leeza Hernandez
• Feathers: Not Just for Flying by Melissa Stewart and Sarah S. Brannen
• A Hundred Billion Trillion Stars by Seth Fischman and Isabel Greenberg
• If Sharks Disappeared by Lily Willams
• A Leaf Can Be by Laurie Purdie Salas and Violeta Dabija
• Pink Is for Blobfish: Discovering the World's Perfectly Pink Animals by Jess Keating and David DeGrand
• Pipsqueaks, Slowpokes, and Stinkers: Celebrating Animal Underdogs by Melissa Stewart and Stephanie Laberis
• The Street Beneath My Feet by Charlotte Guillain and Yuval Zommer
• This Is How We Do It: One Day in the Lives of Seven Kids from around the World by Matt Lamothe
• Weeds Find a Way by Cynthia Jenson-Elliott and Carolyn Fisher

To learn more about how a book’s hook can evolve over time, check out this interactive timeline about the process of writing Can an Aardvark Bark?.

 
It highlights the relationship between hook and text structure.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Melissa Stewart has written more than 180 science books for children, including Seashells: More than a Home and Feathers: Not Just for Flying, both illustrated by Sarah S. Brannen; Pipsqueaks, Slowpokes and Stinkers: Celebrating Animal Underdogs, illustrated by Stephanie Laberis; and Can an Aardvark Bark?, illustrated by Caldecott Honoree Steve Jenkins. She co-authored the upcoming title 5 Kinds of Nonfiction: Enriching Reading and Writing Instruction with Children’s Books. Melissa maintains the award-winning blog Celebrate Science and serves on the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators board of advisors. Her highly-regarded website features a rich array of nonfiction writing resources.


ABOUT THE PRIZE

Melissa Stewart will be giving away a 30-minute Q&A Skype session.


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