Tag: childrens picture books

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Kids Lit

Every Single Word

Kids Lit

Have you met adults who somehow believe that writing a picture book is EASY because there are so FEW WORDS?

Arrrrgh!

As children’s writers, we know that the fewer words, the more perfect each word has to be. No room for dangling participles or near rhymes or even a well-placed semicolon. Just every single word is chosen to be the very best possible one for that thought, that sentence, that page.

Wander through the library or bookstore “Picture Books” and you realize that “books with pictures” are not all alike in format, reading level, or subject matter. How many of those perfect words make a book?

Board books for birth to age 3 – Under 200 words

These fat little books are 8-12 spreads (16-24 pages) and a new manuscript should be under 200 words. The best ones tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end, even if they are introducing a concept. NOTE: Board books with more than 200 words were often originally published as picture books, shrunk in format, and better for an older audience.

Early Picture books for ages 2-5 – 200-500 words

Early picture books are those most likely to be read at library story time. They have a simple-to-follow storyline, often with rhyming words, interactive text, and large clear pictures.

Picture books for ages 3-7 – 500-800 words

These are for kids who are not quite reading on their own yet but want more of a story perhaps with wordplay, multiple characters, and subjects that are more complex. There may be smaller detailed pictures and more pages full of text.

Older Picture books for ages 4-8 – 6000 to 1000 words

Many nonfiction picture books and children’s biographies fit in this group with the pictures supporting the text. Fiction books can include longer folk and fairy tales, several different characters, and social and moral issues.

Beginning readers for ages 6-8 – 1500-2000 words

These are complete stories on fiction and nonfiction subjects of interest to early-grade school students. Vocabulary may be limited to a limited list of sight words and ones that are easy to phonetically decode. Pictures give clues to unknown words or supplement the story.

Hi/Lo books for dyslexic and reluctant middle school readers – 400-1200 words

Age-appropriate fiction and nonfiction subject matter is the important factor in these books as students are apt to be older and no longer a fan of beginning readers. Pictures need to be as exciting as the writing to encourage the student to decode the words to find out more.

Graphic Novels -Next Month!

The other huge and growing picture/word book section is comic books/graphic novels. This genre has boggled the Library of Congress and the Dewey Decimal classifiers since they are both a unique format, fiction, and nonfiction topics, for multiple ages. That dilemma we’ll leave for next month!

Multi-award-winning author Robin Currie learned story sharing by sitting on the floor, in library story times. She has sold 1.7 M copies of her 40 storybooks and writes stories to read and read again. Robin is pleased to report that How to Dress a Dinosaur has only 181 words and is a perfect fit for the board book area. 

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Kids Lit

How I Spent the Mesozoic Era

Kids Lit

Does it seem to take FOREVER to get a brilliant (they all are!) book published for kids? Even as a published author and an agent, months and yeas pass between burble of idea and book in hand.

The Idea

Somewhere between the Construction Equipment Phase and the Superhero Phase, the Dinosaurs roam. Kids are fascinated by the huge lumbering beasts. One theory is that small children, feeling powerless, imagine themselves as awe inspiring predators with gigantic teeth! Roar!

Boy and T-rex

The original inspiration for this story was in fall of 2014, when my youngest grandson was 3 years old and had many things on his mind to do with dinosaurs but few with getting dressed. James was in the dinosaur phase where he can’t pronounce “broccoli” but can say “Pachycephalosaurus” and correct my mispronunciation. He also owned dinosaur themed shirts, hats, socks, jackets, and underwear. And hundreds of plastic painful-to-step-on in-the-dark dinosaur figures.

So how about a book that empowers the child to feel the capabilities of the dinosaur channeled toward the mundane task of getting ready for the day?

The Writing/Editing

It was a brain burble that became first a badly rhyming text – what rhymes with Diplodocus? (Hopped aboard a bus? Was oozing green pus? Super-flu-i-us?). By 2016, I shared “Dressing a Dinosaur” 12-page board book with my critique group. They found things to improve in the 199-word manuscript – and that is why I appreciate them!

boy with stuffed dinosaur

A year of tweaking, renaming to How to Dress a Dinosaur and trimming to 181 words. They reviewed it in again in 2017 and thought Dinosaur was ready to roar.

In February 2019 I sent this manuscript to a critique service, and it received a “GO”!

The Publishing

On to my agent, which required a full proposal with marketing ideas, sales of earlier work, and comp titles – far more than 181 words. Luckily in the meantime no one else thought of this and wrote it!

how to dress a dinosaur cover

The Book

By March of 2022 I expect to celebrate 10 chewable pages of How to Dress a Dinosaur! (In a later article I’ll discuss the stages of preparing the world for this jungle shaking this even!)

Soooooo…

If you are counting, that is a total of 8 years for a board book! Take away: know your reader, edit, edit, edit, wait wait wait, but believe that the best ideas out there will find a home! Even if it seems to take longer than the Pleistocene era!

Robin Currie

Award winning author Robin Currie led children’s departments of Midwestern public libraries before being called midlife to ordained ministry. She has a special love for children’s literacy and Bible storytelling. She serves in Chicago area parishes and annually volunteers teaching English in developing countries. She and her husband actively grandparent 5 wonderful kids.

Robin has published seven library resource collections of creative ideas for library story times, and more than 20 Bible story books for children.

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Child's Craft

What IS a picture book?

We’re story-tellers! So, we often want to tell every scrumptious detail of our stories as we write.

But not so with picture books.

For me restraint is one of the hardest things to master in writing picture books.

A picture book isn’t simply a story with lots of big, colorful illustrations.

A picture book is a seamless weaving of text that tells a story and illustrations that simultaneously show the same story. The two elements must be woven together so that one depends greatly upon the other, so that neither can stand alone.

So, for word people like me it’s difficult to learn what NOT to say in the text of a picture book.

For instance:

  • Fine details like the color of clothes, skin, hair, eyes, size, age—unless that detail is critical to telling that story.
  • Descriptions of minor characters and scenery—again, unless that detail is critical.
  • Facial expressions. These should be implied in the text by dialogue and reactions so the illustrator can run with their interpretation.
  • Sometimes even the gender of the MC isn’t critical to the story. So, the author doesn’t need to mention it.
  • Specific brands, colors or types of houses, cars, toys, animals etc.—unless it is critical to that particular story.

So, what IS a picture book author supposed to put in the text?

  • Show actions and reactions
  • Dialogue
  • Conflicts, problems, difficulties
  • Solutions and resolutions
  • Relationships
  • Show changes or lessons learned
  • Show inner character traits through actions and speech

Isn’t it curious that the illustrator needs to tell the story with pictures, and the writer needs to show the story with words?

Writing and illustration might just be flip sides of the same artistic coin. You think?

Maybe that is one of the reasons picture books are forever popular among children and adults alike. They hit us with a double-whamie. They both tell us AND show us a memorable story.

I know when I’m typing words to a screen, I’m seeing characters and actions in my head. And, since I’m not an illustrator of any fashion I NEED others (illustrators) to make my picture book stories come alive for the children and adults for whom I write. I need illustrators to make my stories become amazing experiences shared between children and the adults who love them.

Note: I do NOT need illustrators to reproduce exactly what I see in my head. I need illustrators to flesh out my story and add new dimensions to it. I need them to make my story bigger and better!

And THAT is what makes for great picture book experiences!

Jean Hall lives in Louisville, Kentucky. She is represented by Cyle Young of Hartline Literary. Her premier picture book series Four Seasons was recently signed by Little Lamb Books. Jean is a member of the SCBWI, Word Weavers International, and the Kentucky Christian Writers. Visit Jean at www.jeanmatthewhall.com, on Facebook at Jean Matthew Hall, and on Twitter as @Jean_Hall.

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Writers Chat

Children’s Christmas Picture Books with Jill Roman Lord

Have a children’s book idea simmering? Jill Lord shares how you can transform those dreams into published picture books that will delight children and the parents who read to them…again…and again…

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