We’re delighted to welcome children’s book author Tynia Thomassie to our teaching staff at TWC. Tynia is the author of four picture books: Feliciana Feydra LeRoux: A Cajun Tall Tale, Feliciana Meets D’Loup Garou, Cajun Through and Through and MIMI’s Tutu. She won the Louisiana Young Reader’s Choice Honor Award in 2000 when 3rd, 4th and 5th graders selected Feliciana Meets D’Loup Garou their favorite book after Harry Potter. Tynia will be offering Writing Children’s Books on Wednesday evenings in South Orange, from 7:30-9:30 PM, during our Spring II session.
I’ve always been turned on by children’s books. Vibrancy and life fairly leaps off every page. Every page turn is a coordinated surprise, a reveal. Every placement on the page, from word to image, is a designed experience. Of course, I didn’t realize that when I first started turning the pages. I happily consumed children’s books without understanding the artistry involved in their production. I felt their appeal without understanding their architecture.
But after a series of crises and catastrophic events in my adult life, when I was sure I misplaced “this little light of mine,” I started looking for it in anything that once gave me genuine pleasure… and I found myself gazing once again at the books on shelves in children’s sections of bookstores. I decided to take a course in children’s book illustration, and thus began my foray into a specific little corner of heaven. Out of those first workshops came the material for my first published picture book. Three more followed. I have since branched into other genres of literature as well, but my dive into writing began with the rekindling of “this little light of mine” and thumbing lovingly through a children’s book.
Sometimes a writer simply needs a place to get started; sometimes a writer needs an appointment and the space to explore that elusive place from which joie de vivre springs. I hope we can play together and discover that place. Let’s write, together.
