Judging a book by it's cover...

I've done this before loads of times but I needed to do it again desperately. I sat in the children's book section at AUB (because it feels kinda creepy to sit in the one at the public library) and looked through all of the books. Then I selected my favourites. Then I selected my favourite pages from those favourites. Now I'm going to discuss what I like about these and what I would like to incorporate into my own book.

The first thing I notice of the pages that I like is the spacing. There is so much space (except for Salvatores but ignore that for now)! I love it. It draws attention to the characters which are the main focus of the story. I love white space too. Simple backgrounds work nicely too but I love the crisp, clean look of characters against white. I think it's something that works amazingly well in contemporary kids books, and can work very well for me since my story is ALL about characters and interactions.

Second, texture. All of these images are rife with traditional media textures. Now, I'm not willing to use a lot of traditional media, such as watercolours, for fear that they aren't suitable for vegans (as watercolour paper often isn't either). However, I can certainly imitate these textures to a degree using digital techniques.

Third, super stylised. The characters don't necessarily resemble their source material in a realistic way (like, erm, dragons?) but that's ok, you still know what they are. There's something about these quirky little shapes that work wonderfully with rough, sketchy drawings.

Fourth, limited colour palettes. In the images in which colour is more prevalent, it is often toned down and desatured to a pastel hue, probably as a result of the medium used. In either case, most people say that lots of colour is important to children's books, but I don't think it's anywhere near as important as carefully selected colour palettes like these.

Fifth, hand drawn text. Now I know that isn't in all of these images, and I know that the macmillan brief says to only use black text on white background, so I'm not sure I could even use hand drawn text anyway, but it really gives so much life to children's books. I suspect the older the reader, the less important a crisp, clear font is (maybe!).

So these are the five elements I want to incorporate into my children's book:




Space
Texture
Stylised drawing
Limited colour palletes
Hand drawn text.





Now that I've written it down I'm hoping it will sink in and inform/inspire me to create better work because I've really been stagnating recently.