According to the author, an experienced editor, teacher, and writer of children's literature, the purpose of this book is threefold: to present a broader view of children's literature, to show the wide range of children's literature, and to reveal the opportunities available for writing children's literature. The chapters discuss: (1) attitudes toward and approaches to children's literature; (2) creative memory, marketability, and scheduling writing time; (3) picture books, storybooks, concept books, and the audience; (4) folk tales, variants, quest tales, campfire tales, and structural elements and techniques; (5) speculative fiction fantasy, character, style, and vision; (6) data versus information presentations, creative research, outlines, biography, and quotations; (7) realism and plot outlines; (8) animal stories; (9) poems, verse, vocabulary, paperbacks, and magazines; and (10) marketing, submission, agents, editorial process, rejection, and revisions. The afterword is an annotated bibliography of books for those interested in writing or reading about children's books. (LL)