If You Want to Write a Story

Crafting a great story can be as fun as reading one with this action-packed introduction to fiction writing as your child’s guide!

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.

Publisher: Neal Porter Books
Published: 7/22/2025
Pages: 40
Binding Type: Hardcover
Size / Weight: 10.3 in H | 10.3 in W | 0.4 in T | 1 lb Wt
ISBN: 9780823458189


About the Author

Jeff Mack is the creator of more than forty picture books, chapter books, and early readers, including Hush Little Polar Bear , Duck in the Fridge , Just a Story , and Scaredy Cats . He has also illustrated award-winning books such as Eve Bunting’s Hurry! Hurry! and James Howe’s Bunnicula and Friends . Originally from Syracuse, NY, he started writing and illustrating his own comic books in the second grade, and he's been doing it ever since. He lives in Western Massachusetts; visit him at www.jeffmack.com.