A homeschool group has approached me about teaching a short course on creating picture books. The idea is intriguing.
What Is a Picture Book?
This is the first question to answer. The obvious answer is a book of pictures with a story. In reviewing many picture books, this is far too simple.
B.J. Novak’s “The Book With No Pictures” is a picture book with no pictures, all text. Matthew Cordell’s “Wolf In the Snow” is all pictures with no story text. Both are great picture books.
The amount of text depends on the age the picture book is for. Those for very young children like Kate Duke’s “The Guinea Pig ABC” and many of the “Pete the Cat” books have very few words. Another way to appeal to children is with repetitive text as in my “The Little Spider”.
Picture books for older children have lots of text. In these the pictures augment the story, not tell it. Tiffany Hammond’s “A Day With No Words” and Katherine Kirkpatrick’s “Redcoats and Petticoats” are this way.
Another approach is seen in Jim Arnosky’s “All About Turkeys”. There is a story and pictures. Facts about turkeys are on streamers by the pictures.
The obvious answer is right, a picture book is pictures with text. However, there is a lot of leeway in how these are used depending on the age the book is for.
Creating Picture Books
I would start by writing down my idea, maybe even some illustration ideas. Then I would look at lots of picture books especially those for the age of the children I wanted to write for. This is not to copy these books, but to get a feel for the type of book that appeals to that age.
Afterwards I can look at my idea again. It’s time for a rewrite because creating picture books is as hard or maybe harder than writing a novel.
