12 Book Creator Features to Use During ‘Be An Author Month’

This March is Be An Author Month and the perfect time to dive into student storytelling! As a super fan of all things Book Creator, I’m excited to share a dozen features that I think are perfect for this annual celebration.

Whether you’re brand new to using Book Creator with your students or jumping in for the hundredth time, I hope you’ll explore a new feature or two as you celebrate Be An Author Month this year!

What is Be An Author Month?

Every March, the team at Book Creator celebrates Be An Author Month! They started this celebration in 2022, and this year, they have oodles of additional resources to explore. There is also a special student writing competition in 2025 for students of all ages.

What is Be An Author month?

At its core, Be An Author Month is dedicated to inspiring every student to embrace their creativity and unique voice and share their stories with the world. Since Book Creator is a tool that gives kids lots of choices on how to share their stories, I’ve highlighted a few favorite features that are perfect for Be An Author Month and this year’s “Tell Your Story” writing competition.

Let’s dive into the list!

1. Text Tool

The Plus sign in Book Creator is where you’ll find lots of ways for students to add to their page. For many writers, the text tool is the perfect place to start and mirrors the experiences they may have had in traditional word processing tools during other parts of their school day. The text tool in Book Creator is for more than just typing words.

Students will have access to formatting options like bold, italic, and underline, as well as the ability to make bulleted and numbered lists. We’ll come back to some of the other options inside of the text tool later on this list, but this is the perfect place for student writers to start.

2. Comment Tool

During Be An Author Month, students are encouraged to share their unique stories with an audience. As they move through the writing process, you can try out the Comment tool to give students feedback on their work. Teachers (and peers, too) can give feedback right on a student’s page, and they have plenty of options to choose from.

If you’re giving feedback to a student, you can jump on video, add an audio note, or combine an emoji with a piece of text. I love the commenting feature in Book Creator, and if your students are feeling a bit competitive during the Tell Your Story writing competition, they’ll certainly appreciate the feedback that you give them.

3. Templates

Students can access templates in Book Creator for all sorts of activities during any time of year. For Be An Author Month, you might point students to the existing templates in Book Creator, which they can access through the Media menu.

Alternatively, you may take this opportunity to share the templates designed specifically for the Tell Your Story writing competition. You’ll find remixable books you can share with your students in this library collection. There is one set of story templates for elementary students and another for secondary students.

4. Canva App

I love all of the app integrations in Book Creator, and during Be An Author Month, you may want to point students towards the Canva App. One of the categories in the rubric for the Tell Your Story writing competition is “Design.”

If your students need support with layout and design, this app can help them create unique designs to add to their book without leaving Book Creator.

5. Embed Feature

Students who are making content in other apps and want to add their work from another EdTech tool into Book Creator may want to use the Embed feature. They can find this option by tapping on the Plus sign, choosing the Media category, and then clicking on the Embed option.

Adding content from other spaces is a popular option for student storytellers. The team at Book Creator are even hosting a webinar with the folks at MagicSchool all about the concept of “AppSmashing” and how it connects back to storytelling during Be An Author Month.

6. Voice Recordings

I have a new bonus episode of my Easy EdTech Podcast going live soon featuring Book Creator’s Community Manager David Hotler. We talked all about “Helping Students Build Confidence Through Writing,” and one of the big themes was giving students a choice on how to share their stories. The voice recording feature in Book Creator is perfect for giving students the power to tell their stories orally.

With this tool, kids can simply tap on the record button and start talking. All they need is a microphone attached to their device (or built-in already). Students can also generate a transcript in whichever language they are speaking and attach it to their voice recording.

7. AutoDraw Tool

The AutoDraw tool inside of Book Creator is one of my favorite features to share with students and teachers. Before ChatGPT came on the scene, it was a fun way to show off the power of Artificial Intelligence and how it could help students turn their sketch into a shape or icon that matched their vision.

In March of 2022 (the same month and year of the first Be An Author Month), I shared why AutoDraw was such a powerful option for the student storytellers I worked with at a school in Hawaii.

Here’s what I wrote three years ago, “During my morning working with students at the Kōkua Academy, a few students went straight to the pen tool to draw items to add to their page. And they quickly found the AutoDraw option. This led to an informal conversation about artificial intelligence, a word they might have heard of but not explored if it wasn’t for the technology within Book Creator.”

During Be An Author Month, you might introduce this feature to your students, too. Kids can use this feature to complement their writing and add additional imagery to the page.

8. Pen for Annotations

You can find the AutoDraw option behind the Pen tool in Book Creator, and that leads us to number eight on this list of twelve. The Pen tool lets students sketch on the page, but I love it for annotating images.

During Be An Author Month, your students might share personal narratives and add a photograph to their page. In addition to including a caption or description of the image, they might decide to use the Pen tool to circle or draw an arrow to highlight something important in the picture.

9. Comic Books

One of my favorite features in Book Creator is the ability to add comic book cells to a page to sequence information. If your students participate in the Tell Your Story writing competition, they will most likely tell a story that follows a sequence of events. When they start a new Book Creator project, instead of choosing the traditional blank page, ask them to consider the Comic option.

If they choose this option, they can format their pages with boxes or cells like a comic book. This makes it easier to sequence events and gives them a chance to use temporal words (that signal the passage of time) like first, then, next, and finally.

10. Icons & Emojis ✅ ❤️ 📖

Book Creator gives students the option to upload images and videos to their page, but I love the quick way kids can add icons and emojis to their page, too. This is the perfect option for students who want a simple graphic on their page or who might want to use emojis in place of traditional bullet points.

If you’re excited about icons and emojis, check out the ebook I made for Book Creator all about this topic.

11. Font Options

Earlier in this post, I mentioned how the rubric for the Tell Your Story writing competition included a section on Design. Part of the criteria for reaching the Exceptional category is:  “Layout and design are polished and creative.”

You may want to point out to students how they can choose from different fonts as they create their book.

Although it can be tempting to have a different font on each page, when you reference the rubric in your conversations with students, you might want to talk about the word “polish” together. It can help students understand that they want to have a cohesive, consistent, and clear design throughout.

12. Video Recordings

Another favorite feature in Book Creator (it’s hard to pick just one or even twelve!) is the ability to record videos right from within the tool. You might encourage students to add a video to the beginning of their story on the first page or two to give some background on why they chose this topic.

Alternatively, you might ask students to reflect on the writing process in a video recording that they add to the last page of their book. Don't forget you can add captions to your videos too!

What are your favorite features in Book Creator? How will you use them with students during Be An Author Month?

Leave a reply to let us know all about your plans for this special March celebration!