I’m always excited to find picture books that would work well as writing prompts for elementary school kids, so I was extra excited to find Ten-Word Tiny Tales: To Inspire and Unsettle by Joseph Coelho (Candlewick, 2023). This volume has stories that are each, as the title suggests, just ten-words long. With a variety of illustrators contributing, Ten-Word Tiny Tales then has a range of interesting pages to pour over as you read the brief stories. The illustrations show that particular person’s take on the author’s “tiny tale” but the book as a whole can be used to spearhead children’s own creativity.
My favorite part of the book is the variety of illustrations by the variety of illustrators. I was not a fan of all of the illustrators’ styles, so it was a relief to see the variety because there were some I definitely loved. The stories had the potential to be unsettling, and it did seem like the illustrators did their best to make them that way. I see so much potential for writing prompts that those things I don’t like are really insignificant. There is more to this volume than at first meets the eye.
Get this book at bookshop.org or at Amazon.com. You can also see more ideas for teaching writing with this book at my homeschool blog, Line upon Line Learning.
