How I Pitched RONAN THE LIBRARIAN by Tara Luebbe and Becky Cattie

It’s publication week for Tara Luebbe and Becky Cattie‘s Ronan the Librarian, and I’m excited to share the pitch I used to submit the manuscript to editors in the hopes that it’ll help you with your own querying. (For other pitches that I’ve shared, you can also check out the How I Pitched tag here on the blog.)

 

 

The Pitch:

Dear Claire,

I hope all is well, and that you had a fantastic holiday weekend!

I’m thrilled to send you [R]ONAN THE LIBRARIAN, a picture book by Tara Luebbe and Becky Cattie.

[R]onan was a mighty barbarian. He invaded. He raided. And back home, he traded – until he found his first book.

“Barbarians raid, not read,” said his friend Helgi.

But [R]onan was not deterred. He invaded. He raided. And he read. And then he built a library to spread his love of reading with his fellow barbarians. But can he get them to see that books are treasures worth pillaging too?

[R]ONAN THE LIBRARIAN is a humorous look at what happens when a mighty raider is initiated into the world of reading.

Tara Luebbe and Becky Cattie are a sibling co-writing team whose debut picture book, SHARK NATE-O, is forthcoming from Little Bee in Spring 2018.  Two more picture books are forthcoming from Albert Whitman in 2018 and 2019.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Best,
Tracy

 

I hope this helps as you craft your own picture book query letters, and that you’ll check out this fantastic picture book by Tara Luebbe and Becky Cattie, illustrated by Victoria Maderna and published by Macmillan/Roaring Brook Press!

On a more personal note, it’s also interesting for me to come back to this pitch and see where the authors and I were in our careers when this book sold back in mid-2017, compared to this week, when the book is published. Tara and Becky now have six published books (including Ronan) and for me, this was my first auction as an agent at BookEnds.