Don’t let anyone tell you picture books are easy to write. All they are doing is showing how little they know about writing. And I really know this is true finishing “Ducks Love Hats”.
At First
There was no plan to really write a book in the lesson plans for Creating Picture Books. Even the original idea sounded flimsy, not nearly enough to fill 32 pages.
How could so few people even dream of creating a book? This was especially true as we only met four times formally. Still, we latched onto the dream.
Finally !
Every page of this little book took hours of work to complete. As these pages were assembled out of pieces done by class members, some of these pages took over 20 layers for the backgrounds, the ducks, the people and the hats.
I am slow with this. Each item had to be created, resized, added to the main page. Did it need to be above or below the other items? Those messy edges had to be erased.
Covers and Title Page
I read around 200 picture books a year. They have a wide variety of illustration styles, many approaches to covers and title pages.
All the book collaborators decided on a color scheme, a title, illustrations. I began with the title page, except it worked better as the cover. What to do for the title page?
Perhaps I could repeat the cover which is sometimes done. However, a different design is better. The new design didn’t match the color scheme, so it changed.
Finishing “Ducks Love Hats”
When working on a book project, it’s easy for a writer to get so involved mistakes sneak in unnoticed. You see or read what you think should be there, even when it isn’t.
The final step is for other people to look the pages over. Then the book will truly be done.
