Mentor Text Resources & a Winner!

Thank you to all the participants in the Mentor Text Challenge. Remember mentor texts are an excellent defense against writer's block, lack of inspiration, and all sorts of writer's ailments.

We have a challenge winner (selected by Random.org):

Marcie!

She has won a 2013 PiBoIdMo Journal and the warm touchy feeling that comes with knowing $3 goes to support Reading is Fundamental!  Marcie grabbed the book A Storm Called Katrina and selected its first person narration style to apply to a WIP.  (Marcie - If I can't find you, email me at laurimeyers (at) gmail.com!)

If you've been following along on the Mentor Text Posts, you deserve a prize for your commitment to studying craft. So just for you... 

Excellent Resources for KidLit Nerds

RenLearn  Type in the title of a book and get its book level, word count, AR points, etc.

Scholastic  Type in the title of a book and get its grade interest level, grade reading level, and theme/subject area. It also provides biographical information for the author and illustrator.

Readability-Score  Paste the text of a story, and receive a wealth of information, including Fleisch-Kincaid Reading Ease, grade levels from a variety of systems, characters, syllables, word count, sentence count, etc.

This site is great if you have typed up mentor texts (like we talked about here...) And it's perfect for analyzing your own work. 

These resources are also helpful if you have greedy bedtime readers, like mine who says "maybe this many books?" while holding up 5 fingers.  Now you have the data to support your side of the negotiations. 

Fancy Nancy at 418 words and Owl babies at 325 words? Okay, fine.  

Dr. Seuss's Sleep Book at 1763 words? Your eyes better be closed by the end of that, kid!

Thanks again for playing, and sorry about any injuries which may have been incurred.

Good luck finding the rest of your PiBoIdMo ideas and celebrating Picture Book Month!