Picture books can appear deceivingly simple to create. But in reality, are some of the trickiest books to write. With the word count being so low, every passage and illustration needs to be absolutely perfect so a child will want to read it over, and over again.
Story-based or fiction picture books are usually 32 pages long and vary between 500 to 1000 words. They are designed for pre-schoolers and children in the first few years of primary school, and are usually intended to be read aloud as a shared experience between an adult and child. Becky Brown, editor at Ladybird explains, "At the younger end of this range, children will love to follow pictures as someone reads to them, joining in with any repeated phrases and spotting things on the page that relate to the story.
Once a child begins to read for themselves, these books are a great way to build confidence and language development. At any age though, children love to share stories with other people, so will enjoy revisiting their favourite books and having them read to them.
Non-fiction picture books tend to be longer in both page and word count because they are usually designed for older children who are reading for themselves. It’s not unusual for non-fiction picture books to go up to 96 pages due to their more complex subject matter, and because they are enjoyed by children of all ages through primary school.
A common misconception about picture books is that it’s necessary to be both an author and illustrator – you don’t need to be both, and you also don’t need to worry about finding an illustrator before approaching a publisher.
Sometimes authors will add a few illustration notes to the manuscript if they feel it will help position the story, but your publisher will work with you to find the best partner for your words. Ygrain Cadlock, editorial director at Puffin says, "In a good picture book, the text and the pictures will add something to the other to create something truly magical. Picture book writers don’t need to show everything in the story, but should also not rely on the illustrations to do all of the storytelling work."
Just because picture books are short, doesn't mean they will be published quickly. It's not unusual for the entire process to take anywhere between 18 and 24 months, given all the intricacies of perfecting the text and illustration.
And of course, the biggest misconception of them all – just because picture books are short and full of pictures, doesn’t mean writing one is an easy thing to do. Both Becky and Ygraine agree that children are often the harshest critics, and it takes a really good story to capture their attention. "Picture books are actually tricker to write because of the short length," says Becky. "It’s a real skill, as each word has to count and the stories require visual imagination."
Becky and Ygraine emphasise that strong characters are integral to a successful picture book. According to Becky, "There are exceptions to the rules, but most good picture books have a central character (or characters), with lots of personality, a compelling story and there’s often a problem to overcome or solve.
Good picture books come in all shapes and sizes – they can be heart-warming and moving, funny and silly, or all of these things at once! Lastly, endings are really important. A good picture book is wrapped up with a satisfying resolution or a twist. Read lots of other picture books for your research and don’t be afraid to be silly!
Similarly, Ygraine looks for standout characters and a strong story. "The best characteristic of a good picture book is the story or characters – the same as you would think for any adult story.
Remember that just because picture books are shorter in length, doesn’t mean that a reader doesn’t want the same story arc as you see in any book, tv show or film – a beginning, middle and end are always important! They also need to be something you want to read time and time again, without boring the reader, or the child being read to.
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As someone who writes books for children, I am privy to a never-ending debate in children’s-literature circles. (You may now be imagining old ladies in floral dresses sitting around Victorian parlors, knitting and discussing the relative merits of “Johnny Tremain” and “Little House on the Prairie”; I assure you, nowadays it is mostly tattoos and pink hair in these groups, though there are still some lovely floral dresses.) The debate is this: What makes a children’s book “good”?
Now that summer vacation is over and students are submitting lists of books they have read since June, the question is particularly relevant. Does having read the novelization of the latest superhero movie “count” as having read a book? How about a graphic novel based on a line of toys? After my seventh-grade summer, I turned in a reading list that consisted of a single title—the illustrated book “Dinotopia,” by James Gurney. My teacher wrote “This is a sad list” on the paper. More fool her: I hadn’t even read “Dinotopia.” It just happened to be the only reading material other than Mad magazine in my room that summer, and I’d felt that my proximity to the book constituted reading it.
The conundrum of the “good” children’s book is best embodied by the apparently immortal—or maybe just undead—series “Goosebumps,” by R. L. Stine. “Goosebumps” is a series of horror novellas, the kid’s-lit equivalent of B-horror movies. It’s also one of the most successful franchises in the business, selling over three hundred and fifty million copies worldwide—which is a ludicrous, almost obscene, number. And here’s a secret from the depths of the publishing industry: neither marketing nor publicity nor movie tie-ins can move three hundred and fifty million copies. The only way to sell that many copies is if millions of kids actually and truly want to read the books. The conclusion is obvious: “Goosebumps” books are good, right?
Maybe, but kids have weird ideas of quality. The children’s author Laura Amy Schlitz, in her 2007 Newbery Medal acceptance speech, explained: “I must remind myself that ‘good’ is an approximate term. A second-grader once asked me for ‘a really, really good book,’ and I asked him, as librarians do, what he considered a good book. He eyed me with thinly veiled impatience and replied, ‘Medium-long with poisonous snakes.’ ”
Touch And Feel BooksAdult responses to the question of good children's books tend to fall into two general camps: a content-oriented approach and a results-oriented approach. The ladies in floral dresses of ages past were concerned with content. A good book for children is somehow instructive or nutritive, often morally so. You might laugh that off as hopelessly old-fashioned, but there has been a broad resurgence of the idea that children’s books should be “socially conscious,” which isn’t that far from morally instructive. Vast numbers of children’s books these days are somehow “timely” and “relevant,” taking on issues like discrimination or animal cruelty. Some particularly wonderful ones that might be described as “socially conscious” are Gene Luen Yang’s “Boxers and Saints,” a duo of graphic novels about religious and colonial persecution during the Boxer Rebellion; Katherine Applegate’s masterpiece “The One and Only Ivan,” which deals with the cruel treatment of a gorilla in a roadside zoo; and Cece Bell’s brilliant and funny “El Deafo,” a graphic memoir about the author growing up with a hearing impairment. But must a book be “socially conscious” to be good?
A different content criterion is psychological value. This is what the child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim advocated. As he explained in “The Uses of Enchantment,” he believed that a good book would “promote [the child’s] ability to find meaning in life. . . . It must stimulate his imagination; help him to develop his intellect and to clarify his emotions; be attuned to his anxieties and aspirations; give full recognition to his difficulties, while at the same time suggesting solutions to the problems which perturb him.” As a children’s-book author, and even as a purchaser of children’s books, I am daunted by those requirements. Bettelheim claims that few children’s books achieve these lofty goals—with the exception of fairy tales. When I read this passage, Maurice Sendak’s “Where The Wild Things Are” always comes to mind. That one, it seems to me, satisfies Bettelheim’s stipulations. O.K., so we’ve given our children Grimm and Sendak. Now what are we supposed to do?
The results-oriented approach gives us a much broader set of criteria for determining quality. “Results” can range from book sales (“Goosebumps,” in that case, would definitely be good) to making a child laugh (any book written by Jon Scieszka would loudly ring that bell). C. S. Lewis took the results-oriented approach in his landmark essay, “On Three Ways of Writing for Children.” Anyone who believes that children’s books should be read only by children, or who slanders the art of writing for children, should read this essay and then graciously admit defeat. After castigating authors who pander to children, Lewis writes, “I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children’s story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children’s story. The good ones last. A waltz which you can like only when you are waltzing is a bad waltz.”
What a beautiful idea. And how perfectly stated. Lewis is not saying that adults determine which books are good for children, but rather that the truly good books for children are those that fall in the center of a Venn diagram, where one circle is books that children like, and the other is books that adults like. But as much as I enjoy this idea, and as much as I like the waltzing metaphor, why should this be true? If we are asking what makes a good book for children, why should we care what adults think of it at all?
I asked Laura Amy Schlitz. “I think,” she said, “you’re really dealing with two questions here: What makes a children’s book good, and what makes a children’s book lit-ra-cha.” She went on, “Some children’s books are like children’s shoes: they fit children perfectly, but they don’t fit adults, and in time children outgrow them. ‘Where the Wild Things Are,’ on the other hand, is literature. It has breadth and depth, and it’s beautifully illustrated and cadenced. I’ve read it hundreds of times to children, and every now and then I take it out and read it to myself. I never grow tired of it.” Sendak? Again? Damn you, Sendak!
What good, though, is calling a children’s book “literature”? Doesn’t that just permit us to alloy children’s opinions with adult ones? We give children’s shoes to children because they fit children’s feet. And why would we denigrate a waltz that can only be danced to? Children, in particular, are made to dance.
One of the best things about being a writer of fiction, as opposed to, say, a philosopher or a theorist, is that when I am faced with a tough question, I don’t have to choose a single answer. I follow the prophet Walt Whitman: I contain multitudes, and I contradict myself whenever I choose to. In the case of determining quality in children’s books, I have two answers.
The first guides my writing process, and is therefore content-oriented. I aspire to write books that are so exciting that my readers will want to devour every page, and are rich and thoughtful enough that every page will be worth devouring. Authors who aim to write serious and important books for children sometimes forget that if a child isn’t motivated to finish a book, then all that fancy stuff halfway through becomes nothing more than self-serving. Authors who aspire only to write mere entertainment, on the other hand, are missing an opportunity: If you’ve got a kid’s attention, why not put it to good use? More importantly, children want to be challenged, made to think and reconsider; they want to learn and grow and become wiser. Kids will like a book with a great story. But they will only love a book that makes them see the world in a new way.
But I also have a results-oriented answer, because, once my books are written, I want to know how I’ve done. If a child opens a book, reads every page of it, closes it, clutches it to his chest, and says, “I love this book,” then it is a good book. Do kids clutch “Goosebumps” to their chests? Some do. Many others clutch “Where the Wild Things Are,” or “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” or “El Deafo,” because those books help them find meaning in life, be it moral, psychological, or ineffable.
For decades, I maintained a status quo of living like a Jew without being one. When I finally pursued conversion, I discovered that I was part of a larger movement born of crisis.
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