Great Judge's Commentary for Twee' in WD Contest.

I'm so excited! Although I didn't win 1st, 2nd or 3rd place in the
21st Annual Writer’s Digest Annual Self-Published Book Awards,the judges critique I copied from my email and posted below, just makes me want to sing!
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10/17/2013. 2:47 PM
As promised, your judges commentary..21st Annual Writer’s Digest Annual Self-Published Book Awards,
Entry Title: Twee'

Author: Susie E. Caron

Judge Number: 7

Entry Category: Children's Picture books

Books are evaluated on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning “needs improvement” and 5 meaning “outstanding”. This scale is strictly to provide a point of reference, it is not a cumulative score and does not reflect ranking.

In some cases, you may see special or out of place characters/symbols in your commentary. For example, you may see that a character/symbol replaces an apostrophe, copyright, and other "symbols". These substitutions occur for various reasons – and are unavoidable. They are often [programming] misinterpretations due to encoding, installed fonts, web based content/sources etc. Since the “content”[data] of the commentary is comprised of data sent from several different computers (programs, fonts etc.,) and from the internet (online entry system), you may at times see an interpretation of what had been an apostrophe, dash, quotation mark etc.

Structure and Organization: 5

Grammar: 4

Production Quality and Cover Design: 5

Plot (if applicable): 4

Character Development (if applicable): 5

Judges Commentary*:

I like the allegorical nature of this story, and I really love the message. I could see this being a great story to introduce a discussion with children about perceptions and expectations. On the level of the allegory, if the rock represents parental protection and guidance (as the back cover suggests), I wonder why the rock isn’t present from the very beginning of Twee''s life? I’d like to see Twee’ moving from a simple acceptance that the rock is there to a dissatisfaction with the limitations it places on her desire to see the world, and then finally to move beyond that dissatisfaction to a new appreciation of the rock’s role in her life. The illustrations are a lovely accompaniment to the text -- they are simple and gentle to look at, and the proportion of text and illustration is well-balanced on the page. There were some grammatical mistakes in the text (particularly comma errors and some dialogue formatting mistakes). I was also confused by the apostrophe in Twee’’s name -- why is it there? If she named herself Twee’, would she name herself with an apostrophe? Does it change the pronunciation somehow? I thought the diction and sentence structures were generally appropriate for this audience level. While the book’s deeper message lends it to reading aloud, it is easily accessible for young independent readers as well.

*Commentary may be quoted as: “Judge, Writer’s Digest 21st Annual Self-Published Book Awards”

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