We are so excited to have Meghan Voss join us today to share information about writing circular picture books!

Meghan Voss is a lifelong lover of stories. A writer and a teacher with degrees in English and Secondary Education, she loves to both share her favorite stories and tell her own. She taught middle and high school English for close to a decade, completed the National Writing Project, and has written literature modules and web copy for award-winning academic companies & websites. Her own creative work has been published in literary and local magazines. She attends writing conferences regularly and enjoys exercising her writing (and photography) chops on her social media accounts. When she’s not writing, you can usually find her baking pies or adventuring with her husband and kids in the Montana mountains she calls home.

Find her on Instagram (@meghanvosstudio) and Facebook (Meghan Voss Studio)!

I’ve never been good at hula-hooping. Every time I step into that plastic circle, the question burns at the back of my head—Will it stay up, or will the blasted hoop clatter to the floor in seconds? The question itself creates enough tension to inspire me to pick the hoop off the floor and shove it into motion.

In like fashion, circle stories begin with a question. There’s a problem to be solved, a challenge to overcome, a question that needs answering. And that burning question lends tension to the entire story. Take Laura Numeroff’s If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. That burning question exists from the very first line—If you give a mouse a cookie… what happens next?? The question inspires children (and adults) to flip the page and keep reading. In Mo Willems’s Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, readers are forced to ask themselves, will this pigeon get to drive the bus? And in Cynthea Liu’s Bike On, Bear!, Bear’s ineptitude on a bike prompts the question, will Bear ever learn to ride?

That’s the beauty of circle stories. The question drives the story as the tension rises and crests. When I set that hula hoop flying, it has nowhere to go but round and round my waist, my patootie, my legs, and/or my ankles. Similarly, circle stories circle ‘round and ‘round the question, often in a cause & effect structure. If I shift my hip that way, then the hoop will…but if I bend my knee like so, it will…and so on.

In this way, circle story plots wrap around and around the question, building in intensity as the story progresses. The cookie leads the mouse to keep asking for more and more linked things, with more and more disastrous consequences. The pigeon refuses to give up his quest to drive the bus, becoming more and more agitated with every page. Bear’s frustration rises higher and higher—

—until finally, the hoop clatters to the ground, right back where it began. Only this time, the question’s been answered— yes, this was the time I rocked that hoop round and round my waist until I finally collapsed, or no, once again, it rattled around my thighs and plunked straight down to my ankles. Either way, the hula hoop is back where it began, the question has been answered, and I’m different (sweatier, at least) for it.

Let’s circle back to our examples (see what I did there?): In If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, the story ends where it began—the mouse asks again for a cookie—but now, he’s in a chaotic heap with a boy who’s become a friend (they’ve changed). In Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, the bus driver returns, just as he’d left on the first page, and asks the inevitable question—did you let the pigeon drive the bus? To which there is now a concrete answer (and let’s face it—some relief (we’ve changed)— that pigeon was relentless!). And in Bike On, Bear!, despite his ultimate success at riding a bike, we’re reminded in the last line that, well, Bear also has issues with swimming—a twist that circles us back to his initial struggle and reminds us that yes, indeed, Bear did ride a bike after all (he’s changed).

So ‘round and ‘round we go. A circle story begins with a question, circles around that question, and ends where it began—albeit changed for the effort.

I’ve never been good at hula-hooping— and yet, I keep picking the dang things back up.

So will your readers.