Welcome to the December 2025 edition of PB First Lines! This month is part two of the special collection of first lines from Slate magazine’s September feature story, The 25 Greatest Picture Books of the Last 25 Years.
This month’s featured author is Nathan Christopher. He’s sharing the revision journey of the opening couplet to When Santa Wrote Back! (I usually link to Amazon, but I’m going to start linking here to my indie bookstore, Tattered Cover. And the book appears to be sold out right now! So if you’re interested in purchasing and it’s not back in stock, go look for it at your local indie.)
First, I want to share a little story of my own. I used to run regularly and experienced the infamous “runner’s high”, that surge of endorphins that feels sort of like I imagine fireworks in the brain would feel. A combination of pride and working hard and feeling great.
I’ve been critiquing picture book texts professionally for several years now, and I experience something similar to that “runner’s high” every time I diagnose what isn’t working for me in a story. It’s so fun and so satisfying—equal only to the feeling I get when the author responds, thanking me for my feedback.
If you’re having trouble figuring out what’s not working in your story, check out my services. I would love to help. Mention this newsletter for half off in December.
And now, on to our featured author!
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Hi Sara! I’ve followed PB First Lines for such a long time, and I’m thrilled to participate and get the chance to step back and unpack how my own opening lines came to be. For When Santa Wrote Back!, the first lines came to me early and ended up steering everything that followed.
Original First Lines (December 2021):
Dear Santa,
How’s the North Pole? Has the weather been nice?
Did you see that I tidied my room this year? Twice.
Final First Lines (published 2025):
Dear Santa,
How’s the North Pole? Has the weather been nice?
Did you notice I tidied my room this year? Twice!
The spark of inspiration for this book arrived when I saw an actual kid’s letter to Santa online. It began with the bare-minimum politeness (”How are Mrs. Claus and the reindeer?”) but then immediately pivoted to the true purpose: the wish list. I found the abrupt change of topic so authentic and so funny. Kids want to be polite, but at the end of the day there’s gift-related business to take care of. That concept stuck with me, and I kept returning to it, turning it over to see if there was a story there.
One day, shortly after that (I actually remember where I was in my house), the first couplet popped into my head. Those lines captured the humor and mischievous voice that ultimately shaped the entire book. Once I had those opening lines, they gave me a way into the story and a clear sense of who my main character, Jake, was: earnest, ambitious, and deeply proud of tidying his room exactly twice.
My earliest draft from late 2021 wasn’t even fully rhyming yet. It was a part-rhyme part-prose outline, created so I could get critique-partner feedback on the direction before committing to drafting the story fully in rhyme. But the first lines have barely changed since that draft: “Did you see that” became “Did you notice,” and a period became an exclamation point.
The story did go through lots of other changes, though, including expanding dramatically in revisions with my editor. The first fully rhyming draft landed around 610 words. The version I submitted to Sourcebooks was trimmed to 600 words, and by the time the book was finalized it reached 960 words! But the first lines held steady. I think they worked because they set the tone immediately: polite (on the surface), authentic, and with a hint of humor. Exactly the combination that defined Jake’s personality and created a template that has now led to three books: When Santa Wrote Back! is out in the world, and two more Jake adventures will arrive in 2026: When the Witch Wrote Back! and When the Easter Bunny Wrote Back!
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Revision tip: know when your first line doesn’t need revision! Sometimes you come up with the perfect first line that does exactly what you want it to and provides the starting point for a story that will require loads of revision but can itself remain the same. The trick is knowing when that is the case!
If you read and enjoy When Santa Wrote Back, leave a review! (Amazon is still the best place to leave a review… And holy moly, this book already has 65! Let’s get When Santa Wrote Back! to 100!) If you need help getting started writing a review, read this blog post.
If you’ve got a book coming out in 2026 and you’d like to be a featured author or you’d simply like your book included in the collection, please let me know!
If you’re interested in feedback on a first line, fill out this anonymous form, and I’ll analyze submissions the next month.
I LOVE this so much! Every kid's dream.