About Us

Welcome to Kidlit411, your one stop info shop for children's writers and illustrators.

Our goal is to organize relevant information about writing and illustrating for children in one handy spot, right here. Our site includes:

  • Topical Pages - links to articles and resources organized by topics 
  • The Weekly 411 - each week, we compile the new links that were added during the week in an update post. You can receive this by email by subscribing to email updates (in the left hand sidebar)

So spend some time with us! Browse, click, connect and welcome to the world of kid lit writers and illustrators!


About Us



KIDLIT411 founder, Elaine Kiely Kearns is a picture book author and also writes middle grade. Armed with a master's degree in Education and working from her home office, she spends her time perusing the internet for golden nuggets of information about children's writing and creating her own stories. Her debut picture book, Noah Noasaurus, illustrated by Colin Jack (Albert Whitman) came out in 2019.  

Sylvia Liu is the other half of Kidlit411. She writes middle grade (Hana Hsu and the Ghost Crab Nation, Razorbill 2022; Manatee's Best Friend, Scholastic 2021, Near & Deer, Scholastic 2024) and picture books (A Morning with Grandpa, illustrated by Christina Forshay Lee & Low Books 2016). She is represented by Jennifer March Soloway of Andrea Brown Literary Agency.



About our Website Banner


Each month, we change our banner to feature a different illustrator's work. Our March 2024 banner was designed by Moira Ratchford.

© Moira Ratchford

Contribute

We welcome links for the site and illustrations for the front page. Please send links or low res JPGs of your work and your website to kidlit411@kidlit411.com.



Connect 

Sign up for email updates, and we will send you a weekly post with all the new links added over the past week (The Weekly 411).

Join our Facebook group for information and camaraderie.


Join our Facebook manuscript swap or our Facebook portfolio   swap to find critique partners.



Terms & Conditions of Giveaways


We run frequent book giveaways in our Author & Illustrator Spotlights. Winners are selected randomly via Rafflecopter.com and notified by email. Kidlit411 will not share or sell any information you provide in entering our giveaways and will use any information only for the purpose of contacting the winner or verifying entries. Odds of winning depend on the number of entries received. Open to U.S. residents only, ages 18+. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited by law.  

Donate


We run this site on a shoestring, but even shoestrings cost money. If you have found this site helpful and would like to contribute, we would be very grateful.