Picture books for pre-schoolers are usually read by adults to
the child. They are often landscape so that the child and parent can share the
book. Even households that have few books will often have some picture books.
Even today picture books are expensive to produce so they
must be easily translatable into other languages. Therefore, rhyming texts are
not usually accepted. There are of course exceptions, including Julia
Donaldson's work.
For practical reasons to do with printing, picture books are
usually 32 or 28 pages long, including endpapers. That is, 24 or 28 pages - or
12 or 14 double spreads.
The story must be contained in this quite rigid format.
There will be a lot of repetition.
There is a change in pace / rhythm about 2/3 to 4/5 of the
way through the story – rarely exactly ¾ of the way through.
There is sometimes a joke for adults – but not at the
expense of the child.
The pictures contain more of the story.
The font is adult-friendly e.g. Times new Roman which is
actually nightmare for new readers; the serifs are confusing and the 'a' and
'g' are difficult.
The language may be surprisingly sophisticated.
Take a look at some picture books. You might also like to study some well-known
ones:
Julia Donaldson's Room
on the Broom
Judith Kerr's The
Tiger Who Came to Tea
Eric Carle's The
Hungry Caterpillar
Maurice Sendak's Where
the Wild Things Are
Look at:
Repetition
Change of pace
How the pictures work. Look as well at the balance of
pictures. Do some have no text? Which are on single spreads and which on
double? Why? Are there multiple pictures
on some pages? Why? How effective is this?
Look at how white space is used? What leads the eye from one
page to the next?
Is there a joke for the adults?
What about the language and the font?
Now your turn
Have a go at producing a picture book text. First write it
as a continuous story. Then spread it across the 24 or 28 pages. Think about how
the pictures will work.
