About the Review, and what it is not

The Carolina Kidlit Review is an independent magazine about making children's books. This page sets out what the magazine does, what it leaves out on purpose, and how it is written.

What the Review is

A magazine, nothing more. It runs six sections: craft and revision, illustration, getting published, critique groups, the Carolinas, and starting out. The reader it writes for is a person in North or South Carolina making a first book who wants the working vocabulary before the advice: what a dummy is, what a revision pass changes, what an agent does and does not do. Every guide carries its date in a public ledger, so you can judge how current a claim is. The magazine has been independent since 2026, and it promises no one a contract. The method is four verbs: explain, compare, check, practice.

What it leaves out on purpose

It publishes no calendar, no directory of people, no listings and no invitations of any kind, and it never writes in the name of any organisation in the field. When these pages describe an organisation, they describe it in the third person, from its published material, with the date that material was read. Things that change quickly, dates, people and prices above all, belong to whoever publishes them and are accurate only at their own source; this magazine deals in what holds still.

How a guide here is written

Each guide starts from published material and stays inside it. Where a source gives a number, the guide quotes it and dates it. Where a source gives no number, the guide says the number is not published instead of rounding one in. Where two sources disagree, both are given, and the disagreement is left visible rather than resolved in silence. Nothing here is written from memory, and nothing is written to fill a gap that the record leaves open.

How to check any page before you trust it

The habit travels beyond this site: find the publisher, then the date. The same check works on any advice page anywhere. A name behind it, a date on it, and a way to reach whoever wrote it are the three things worth looking for before you act on a word of it. Every guide here is signed by the desk of the Review and dated in the public ledger, and this magazine corrects its errors in the open. If you find one, write to the desk.