What publishers love...what publishers despise...and how to properly format a picture book manuscript for submission to a publishing house.

My creative baby was ugly, at least that's what I thought.

I was finished. Finally finished with my first children's book manuscript - a 55-verse children's poem. I had worked on it for weeks - whenever I could - and among the torn-out, stapled spiral pages, and the jots on memo and used printer paper, the semblance of the work took shape. It asked to be assembled, collated and edited to form. Yes, really, it was supposed to be longer (unbelievable) but since I'm one of those writers that edits as I go, it seemed to find its own com