PB First Lines November 2025 Edition
Featuring Stephanie Gibeault and The Dog Who Saved the Bees
Welcome to the November 2025 edition of PB First Lines!
I’m so glad you’re here.
I’ve got a special collection of first lines for you this month (and next). Back in September, Slate magazine published a collection of stories about picture books, including the feature story, The 25 Greatest Picture Books of the Last 25 Years. It is behind a paywall, unfortunately. But this month and next month, the first lines collections will comprise those books. So if you don’t subscribe, you can still see what books made the list. I’d be interested to know if you agree with the list. Leave your thoughts in the comments.
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.
Today, I’m delighted to have Stephanie Gibeault share her revision journey for the first line of her book, The Dog Who Saved the Bees, art by David Hohn.
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Thank you very much for inviting me to PB First Lines, Sara. I learn so much from how other people start their stories and the revisions that get them to their final published version. It’s a pleasure to share my first line journey with you.
INITIAL FIRST LINE:
Mack, a big yellow dog, jumps out of the van and bounces around Cybil, his owner.
FINAL FIRST LINE:
The sun shimmered.
The bees buzzed.
Hundreds of hives needed help.
Cybil Preston got to work.
I know I’m cheating with that final first line by including four sentences rather than one. However, I wanted to show how dramatically the tone changed from first draft to last. Plus, those first four sentences repeat at the end of the story with a few tweaks to show how the situation has changed. Bookending the story like that was an important leap forward in my revisions and in fact, David Hohn, the illustrator, told me those are his favorite lines.
But let’s start at the beginning. I wrote my first draft of The Dog Who Saved the Bees in October of 2018. I had just completed an article for the American Kennel Club about Cybil Preston and her dog Mack. It was an interview piece geared to adults, but I knew kids would love the heartwarming tale of Cybil rescuing Mack from a lonely life in a garage and then training him to be a scent detection dog. So after getting Cybil’s permission to write a manuscript, I sat down and typed my first draft.
As you can tell from that initial first line, it sounded like a magazine article instead of a picture book. Keep in mind, although I had been writing professionally for several years, it was all for magazines and the internet. I had a lot to learn! It wasn’t until July 2022, over a year after signing with my agent and selling other manuscripts, that I finally added the sentences that became the published first lines. But they weren’t at the beginning of the story! It was thanks to my brilliant critique group The Word Weavers, and Melissa Coffey in particular, that I moved those sentences to the start of the manuscript and paralleled them at the end.
Now, not only did I have a manuscript that read like a picture book, but I also had an opening that set the stage and captured the main character’s obstacle. Draft 32 went out on submission in February 2023, and the brilliant Barb McNally at Sleeping Bear Press showed interest right away. The Dog Who Saved the Bees came out August 1, 2025, and after an almost seven-year journey, I’m elated to see all that revising paid off.
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Revision tip: have others read your work! I don’t think the importance of a critique group can be overstated! You can meet in person or virtually. You can swap stories on a schedule or have tons of flexibility. You can be part of a group that writes across age groups or stick with just picture book writers. There are so many ways you can do this, but have others read your work!
If you read and enjoy The Dog Who Saved the Bees, leave a review! If you need help getting started writing a review, read this blog post.
If you’ve been impacted at all by the American government shutdown, I’d love to offer you a full critique at the discounted price of $30.