Using Poetry in Non-Fiction Picture Books: First, Stop Making Sense

Guest Blog by Cedar Pruitt

​I think of poetry as the richest form of language, delivered with the sparest set of tools. The constraints of sentences, paragraphs, and punctuation have all vanished. And what remains? Words, pauses, and silence.
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When writing poetry, not everything makes sense—at least at first. For me, letting go of making sense is the magic and art of poetry. And sometimes that process leads to…a nonfiction picture book. 

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I wrote my debut picture book in one poetic jumble on a snowy February day. The inspiration? A real-life event in which an owl flew out of a wildfire and into the co-pilot seat of a firefighting helicopter, where it stayed for several water drops.  

 Two years later, we’re celebrating the launch of  Fire Flight: A Wildfire Escape (Capstone Editions, 2024), illustrated by Chiara Fedele.
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Although Fire Flight followed dozens of other manuscripts and years of hard work, it was my first in which I completely handed over the controls to my inner poet. I allowed myself to experience the feeling of the story and stopped trying to write a narrative. I let go of my sentences, paragraphs, punctuation…and expectations. This is all to say that my first pass didn’t make complete sense.
 A snippet:

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Owl territory is toast
almost
as orange ribbons weave across loved land.
This terrible tapestry glows
Until a crashing splash flows low on
Branches, nests and heartwood.
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From the initial text you see above, only two phrases made it into the final book (“owl territory,” and “orange ribbons.”), but if I hadn’t released myself from the need to make sense, I don’t think I would have found those initial words. And the entire story wouldn’t have taken flight.

What I learned: Let go of the story. Find the feeling. Be free to choose only the words that make you FEEL the essence of the narrative. Apply silence liberally.  
 
My second picture book, releasing in 2026, is also poetic and non-fiction. This story took the opposite path. I didn’t burst out into poetry; far from it. Instead, I wrote laboriously complete sentences to document what my 7th grader learned in school. I focused on describing what it must have been like, late summer, for the teenagers who followed a long, cramped tunnel underneath a French forest until they reached hundreds of astounding cave paintings made 30,000 years earlier.

Eventually, I took that plodding narrative…and wrote about it in a way that made a lot less sense but had a lot more feeling – a poem.
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​A snippet:

A smell, a feel, a breeze, a touch,
a rabbit?
Robot follows
 
Marcel calls
Not knowing what lies ahead
How could he?
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​Ultimately, none of that made it into the final text, but it freed me to FEEL the beat of the heart of the main character – to let the spaces between words matter as much as the words do. That book, titled What Marcel Found: The Incredible Story of the Lascaux Cave Paintings (Beach Lane Books /Simon & Schuster, 2026) will be illustrated by David Litchfield.
 
What I learned: When you’ve told a story in a completely linear way that makes absolute sense, run it over with your poetry steamroller, and crush the syntax until you have silences that raise questions.
Know that the illustrations will add additional depth and truth to your non-fiction poetic story. 
 
If you ever find yourself stuck in your writing, just try to stop making sense. Embrace liberty in the way my favorite poet Frank O’Hara did. He wrote about everyday things with a joy and an intimacy that was unique. He really was free.
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Here’s to finding the beat of your own writing and the freedom of poetry in your work!

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Cedar Pruitt holds an Ed.M. from Harvard University and works as a consultant of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. She also holds a lifelong love for the music of the Talking Heads. She lives in Massachusetts with her family and is represented by literary agent Mary Cummings of Great River Literary. To learn more about Cedar visit here.