Curriculum As Flypaper for Your Nonfiction Writing

Guest Blog by Cedar Pruitt

You know that feeling when a perfect story idea just drops into your lap?

No? Me, neither!

Usually the idea-into-lap phenomenon is just me writing notes like “Story about Texas” and “Swans get right of way” and then staring at those words months later, mesmerized yet unable to find a first sentence. Or last sentence. Or any middle sentences whatsoever.
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But (thankfully!) my forthcoming book took a different path. I remember the day well. I was in my living room, working on my writing. It was not going well, as usual. Then the door opened, and in walked the idea. Actually, it was my daughter coming home from middle school. Like a little bee collecting pollen, she was loaded down with a story idea. The first thing she said was, “Do you know that KIDS discovered the cave art of Lascaux?”

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I don’t think I even looked up at her cute pre-teen face as I opened a new word doc right then and there. “This sounds like a story idea,” I said. “Tell me more.”

“I thought you’d say that,” she said and went on to regale me with the unforgettable story of a boy and his dog on a walk in the woods. His stunning prehistoric find got a brief mention in the 7th grade curriculum in public school in Massachusetts at the time – which was changed the next year.

I like to think we caught it just in time! Without that moment, I don’t know how my new book, What Marcel Found: The Incredible Discovery of the Lascaux Cave Paintings (Beach Lane Books/ Simon & Schuster, 2026) would have come into being. And where would David Litchfield put all his breathtaking, brilliant, glittering artwork? Other books? Don’t be silly! 

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Since then, I’ve always thought of school curriculum as a kind of fly paper for story ideas (if stories were flies…you know what I mean).

How do you find this special fly paper?

If seventh graders aren’t waltzing into your living room on the regular, then you have to poke around. But curricula can be found. Search by state, and include the phrase “k-12 curriculum topics.” Once I have it, I like to read through the K-5 sections, which are great swaths of fly paper, and investigate each fly to see if it has legs (gosh, this is a nightmare of a metaphor, but I’m in too deep to back out).

For instance, poking around led me to New Hampshire’s science standards:
httpps://www.education.nh.gov/sites/g/files/ehbemt326/files/inline-documents/standards-science.pdf  
And now I’m dreaming of a story about Forces and Motion.

Poking around also led me to California’s English and Social Science standards: 
https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/documents/histsocscistnd.pdf
And now I’m dreaming about a story exploring the origins of Chinese civilization in the Huang-He Valley during the Shang Dynasty.
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You get the idea! These are flies with legs. And they WILL come at your fly paper if you put enough of it out there. 
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​Getting the idea out of the curriculum did not make it a winning story, of course. That would be too easy. First, I wrote a very plodding, boring, straightforward story. Over months, I rewrote it as a lyrical story about forest treasure. My agent submitted it and we got an excellent rejection with a single sentence that led me to dramatically rework the whole story. This was not an R&R. It was more like an R&R&R – Reject and Revise and Resubmit elsewhere.

What surprised me most about all this? Well, this idea came from 7th grade curriculum. But the finished story of What Marcel Found, about discovery and art and humanity during a time of great war and sadness, is very well suited for children ages 4-8.

In fact, the themes of forest exploration and finding buried treasure will also beckon to both younger and older kids. Would you have predicted all that from a curricular topic for middle school? If so, you’re a better predictor than me!

All that is to say, don’t be afraid to look through middle and high school curriculum, too. It can all be part of your quest to get as much fly paper as possible. And don’t forget to be patient with the idea emergence. As this book launches, my “little bee” of a daughter will in her senior year of high school.
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May you end up with many flies!

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​Cedar Pruitt is a children’s author with many stories to share. Her debut book, Fire Flight: A Wildfire Escape (illustrated by Chiara Fedele; Capstone, 2024) was named a Best Children’s Book of the Year by Bank Street College of Education. Her forthcoming book, What Marcel Found: The Incredible Discovery of the Lascaux Cave Paintings (illustrated by David Litchfield; Beach Lane Books / Simon & Schuster, 2026) was named a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection. She holds an M.Ed. from Harvard University and lives in New England with her family.
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To learn more about Cedar, visit her website or find her in Instagram @CedarPruittBooks or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/CedarPruittBooks/. 
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