Tag: picture book

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Picture Book Covers

Just as for regular books, picture book covers do more than hold the book together. A good cover attracts interest so a potential reader will stop and look. It showcases the title and author of the book.

eBook and Print differences

An eBook has only the front cover. This is the same size as the interior pages. It needs to be bold, easy to see as many people look at it on their phones.

A print cover has three parts. One is the front with the title, author, illustrator and image on it.

The back of a picture book varies. It can have text to create interest in the book. Or it can be an image that is either new or a continuation of the front image.

Between the front and back is the spine. Picture books are thin. The spine must be a quarter of an inch or bigger before the title and author can be printed on it. Only hardback books have a spine.

Creating Picture Book Covers

Although there are templates and places to purchase a cover, I prefer to create my own. I use paint shop to do this.

The size is important. Whoever is going to print your picture book will tell you the size for the cover plus bleed or small margin around the cover. Sizes for front, back and spine are given too.

The front, back and spine are created separately. Each is saved separately.

back picture book covers
This isn’t the real back cover for “Waiting for Fairies”. It has been cropped on both sides to fit into a good web image. This highlights the need to have wide margins around your front and back covers so they can be cropped as needed to suit different formats.

My Method

I create a blank page 300 dpi – 600 dpi the right size for the front and add a background color. This may or may not show very much, but, unless your cover will have lots of white, you want to make sure the page is not white.

The selected front image is resized, same dpi, to fit on the page. Copy and paste as a new layer. Position it. Save it so the layers are left intact, not merged.

Add the title. Experiment with fonts, size, colors, orientation until it’s what you want. Position and save this.

Add the author’s name. This is much the same as for the title. Save this.

Creating the back cover starts with a new page. Add the images and text and save this so the layers are left intact.

The spine is tricky because it is so narrow. I create a page so the spine is horizontal to work with. Put the title and author on it making sure the text is smaller than the spine. Save.

The Final cover

Create a page the size of the full cover including bleed margin. Add the background color.

Go to the front page and merge the layers. Copy and paste it as a new layer on the final cover. Move it into position. (If you save the merged image, do it as a new image.

Repeat to put the back page on the final cover. Rotate the spine to vertical, copy and paste as a new layer. It must be positioned in the exact center of the cover.

I save the final cover with the layers. Then I merge the layers and save it as a merged version. Printing the picture book is the next step.

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Formatting Your Picture Book

The illustrations are done. Text is on the illustrations. Everything is ready for formatting your picture book, you hope.

Front Pages

Just like in a regular book, picture books have title pages. There is a copyright page as well.

(Although I am focusing on a printed book, if you are doing an eBook version, you can ignore the page count. An eBook requires a Table of Contents page added right after the copyright page which should be right after the title page in this format. Don’t forget to resize your images to 8” by 11”. Put them on that size pages using the 0.01” margins using In Line with Text.)

Title pages usually have some cute image taken from the book. If your book is about rabbits, the title page should have a rabbit image along with the title and author.

Copyright pages aren’t always in the front of picture books. Sometimes this information is put on the last page. If it is in the front, often the image on the page makes a two page spread with the first page. Other times it is an introductory image for the book.

Back Pages

In some picture books about animals or history, there is a last page or pages giving more information. I did this in “Waiting For Fairies” with a Nature’s Cast about the night creatures appearing in the book. In “Redcoats and Petticoats” the last page is about the spy network in New England during the Revolutionary War.

formatting your picture book starts with the pictures
This is one of two pages at the end of “Waiting for Fairies” telling about the creatures appearing in the story. I did have to crop the edges to get the right fit for the website. That brings up another issue with picture books. The edge of a page descends into the spine on one side. When you create your images, be sure you keep the main images a good half inch from the edges of the page.

Counting Pages

Traditionally printed picture books have a number of pages evenly divisible by four, usually 32. The reason goes back to how the books are printed. Each print page sheet has four book pages on it. You can see how this works if you take a calendar apart.

Count your pages. Is the number a multiple of four? If not, perhaps you can add or delete a page. Or you can add a blank page. Another way is to use a page for cute images related to your book as is done “For Love of Goats” or “Diary of a Spider”.

Remember your title and first page have an odd number to put them on the right side.

Creating the Pages

I work in Word so my pages must have a margin. If you also work in Word, formatting your picture book needs the margins set at 0.01”.

Resize your images to fit the page size you are using using your paint shop. Do not resize or crop them after putting them on the book pages.

Each image is placed on a page using In Line With Text to lock it into position. Even if your title page has lots of blank space on it, create an image of it the same size as your other images. All of these images should be JPEGs so all layers are merged.

Once all the images are on your pages, you have finished formatting your picture book interior. Now you need a cover.

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Adding Picture Book Text

Adding picture book text is part of the illustrating. The text must fit into the illustrations, be a part of them, yet be separate.

How much text will be included depends on the book. Those for older readers often have lots of text telling a story. Examples include “Redcoats and Petticoats” and “The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship”.

Those for younger readers have none to only a few lines. An example would be “Wolf in the Snow” where the text is only names of sounds like howl. “Waiting For Fairies” has a couple of lines of text on each page.

cover for "Waiting For Fairies" by Karen GoatKeeper
In this picture book the text usually fit in two lines along the bottom of the page. When doing the illustrations, I left enough room to fit in the text.

Choosing a Font

There are lots of fonts to choose from. In picture books the aim is to be simple and easy to read.

My preference is Georgia as I find it easy to read and pretty with the serifs. Since I use it on my website and for writing, it was a natural choice for my picture books.

Another aspect is the color of the font. Black is the most common.

Picture book text doesn’t have to be in straight lines. It can be curved or in a column. In this book it is tiered up and down.

Placing the Text

Adding picture book text is part of doing the illustrations. The illustration must leave space for the text. It is often placed at the bottom of the pages.

When I did “The Little Spider” the text became part of the illustrations. This spider is trying to get to a high perch. When the spider goes up, the text goes up. When the spider goes down, so does the text.

Making Text Readable

Black is popular as it shows up well against most backgrounds. There are times when black does not show up well.

On a few pages of “The Little Spider”, this was the case. The text was against brown and disappeared into the background. I created a light yellow oblong and used brown text preserving the ground effect, but making the text readable.

Adding picture book text takes time and thought. The font must reflect the purpose of the book and be readable. The text must fit into the illustrations. Then the picture book becomes a picture book.

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Formatting Picture Book Illustrations

Formatting picture book illustrations is the last step. The illustrations must be finished first.

“For Love of Goats” taught me a lot about doing illustrations. Watercolor may be beautiful, but mistakes are forever. Or are they?

Creating the Pictures

Each drawing takes hours. The sketch is drawn, redrawn, corrected. Watercolor is put on after that.

Pencil lines show through watercolor, so they must be very light. If they are too light, you can’t see them.

formatting picture book illustrations example
This picture book image from “For Love of Goats” was created using watercolor and the computer. The kidding pen with the straw was one watercolor picture. Each of the three goats was done separately in watercolor. The goats were placed in the pen using a computer.

Computer ‘Magic’

Formatting picture book illustrations requires scanning them into a computer as JPEG images. My paint shop creates and works with these images. It let me trim down lines that were too thick with paint.

In “For Love of Goats” I have a series of short fiction much of which is set in a stall created with bales of hay. Painting identical stalls for each picture was beyond my skill. I painted one stall.

Then I drew and painted the goats to go into the stall. Duplicating the stall, I had it for all of my drawings. Using my paint shop, I placed the goats into the stall. This worked so well, I used the same method for several of the illustrations.

Doing these things does mean using multiple layers. The first time or two, using layers can be intimidating. Practice helps.

One important practice is to save all of your original drawings in their original form. When I work on one, I save this one as a duplicate in case I have to start over. This is a good habit to have for any illustration work: drawings, paintings, photographs. It is also a good idea with the text for a picture book or a novel.

Final Images

Many picture books are done in letter size. That is the size I create my drawings in.

However, eBooks are usually sized for 6” by 9” ratios. That distorts the letter size image. When formatting picture book illustrations for a digital version, it’s important to crop and resize them for this so they look right in digital format. That is 8” by 11” instead of 8 ½” by 11”.

image from Waiting for Fairies
All of the illustrations for “Waiting For Fairies” were done a complete pictures. There is the infamous bush that appears in many of the illustrations. It is hard to redo the same bush or fence or mushrooms over and over so they look the same each time. Formatting these images was mostly doing some cleaning of sloppy lines and fitting the images together for the two page spreads.

“Waiting For Fairies”

Although I created many of the images using layers for some picture books, this picture book was done with all complete pictures. That bush was a challenge and, if each image is looked over carefully, it isn’t exactly the same in all of them.

As I look over different picture books, my painting and computer method is not the norm. However, each book is different and each illustrator uses a method they are comfortable with.

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Picture Book Illustrations

Traditional publishing companies often control picture book illustrations assigning the text to an artist. Indie picture book authors have two choices: 1) Find and hire an illustrator; or 2) Do their own illustrations.

I am an indie author. That leaves me with the two choices.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper
What I found out doing this book was to start with illustrating something you are familiar with and enjoy drawing. After that, other projects aren’t so intimidating.

Hiring an Illustrator

For years I did try to find an illustrator. Good ones are expensive. The amount of work that must be put into the illustrations makes them worth their cost.

My first illustrated book was “For Love of Goats” which presented several problems. Goats are not easy to draw. The book includes several breeds of goats and each one is different.

Additionally, goats have attitudes and behaviors. Someone unfamiliar with goats, working only from photographs, will miss these. And these were reflected in the text.

Goats have been an important part of my life for fifty years. I’ve watched them. That didn’t mean I could draw them. I wanted to finish this book I’d worked so hard on, so I learned.

Picture Book Illustrations

If you’ve been looking at picture books, you know illustrations are done in many mediums. They are done in many styles.

Once the decision is made to illustrate a book, the medium is chosen. It must be one the illustrator is comfortable with.

My medium is watercolor. Why? Because I like the way it looks, the way it is done and the challenge of it. Watercolor is a most unforgiving medium as mistakes never go away.

cover for "Waiting For Fairies" by Karen GoatKeeper
People are hard to draw for me. The mushrooms and creatures were done using photographs of the real ones as models. One of the difficult parts was drawing the same mushroom ring for each of may pages.

Waiting for Fairies

After completing “For Love of Goats”, I had the confidence to illustrate the two picture books I had written text for. The next one I tackled was “Waiting for Fairies”.

People are incredibly hard for me to draw. Even now, I look at my illustrations and wish I had done better.

The fun part of doing these illustrations was the opportunity it gave me to add an additional layer to the story told in the text. Since the child was waiting for fairies, there should be fairies somewhere.

Doing picture book illustrations isn’t for every author. I’ve found it is for me.

“Waiting for Fairies” eBook version is free through Smashwords for the month of November. The coupon code is LXLLT.

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Creating Picture Books

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.

Many picture books, like “The Little Spider”, include a page about the animal or animals shown in the text. The page in this book is about spider ballooning, the method used by spiders to move to new places.

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.

cover for "Waiting For Fairies" by Karen GoatKeeper
Although the text and illustrations in this book are about Ozark night creatures the child sees, the illustrations tell another story about fairies.

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.

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Opal and Agate Picture Books

I enjoy reading picture books and have been reading four a week to do reviews on my Goodreads blog. However, this is making writing my Opal and Agate picture books harder.

There are so many wonderful picture books on the shelves of my library. Some tell stories, fun or scary. Others tell about events or activities. They make me wonder if I can write picture books as good as they are.

Nubian doe kid Opal will star in some animal stories
Nubian doe High Reaches Opal deserves a good picture book series.

Picture Book Goats

A famous goat story is Billy Goats Gruff. It’s a cute story. Dairy goat owners tend to despise the illustrations. These are of caricature goats with shaggy coats, big horns and big goatees.

My library just acquired a beginning reading book about farm goats. It uses photographs of goats. Except almost all of them have horns and the book makes a big deal about horns.

My take is that the author knew nothing about goats, had never owned a goat or talked to many people who owned goats and never been to a goat show.

Yes, goats are usually born with horns. However, dairy goats with the exception of Nigerian Dwarfs have those horns removed. Any horned dairy goat in a show is disqualified.

Novel boring times can use friendly faces like Nubian goats
No horns. No shaggy coats. Nubian goats from my herd. High Reaches Spring is in front.

My Goats?

My goats don’t go to shows. They stay on the farm now. However, I do take their horns off and try to maintain the dairy goat standards for Nubians. These standards were set up to improve the breed to live longer, healthier lives and give more milk.

My goats are getting old now. Violet is fourteen. Drucilla, Opal’s mother, is thirteen. Goats usually live twelve to fifteen years.

The herd still goes out on good days – no rain or snow. They still climb the hills. Yes, they are slower, but they still range widely.

I want my Opal and Agate picture books to show how beautiful Nubian goats can be, no horns, no shaggy coats.

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Animal Stories

Animal stories seem to be very popular with young children. They did stay popular with older children too, as I remember.

My favorites were horse stories. I read lots of them, fiction and nonfiction, until my mother started limiting how many I could check out. Then I moved to nature stories and still read many of both.

“Clarence: The Life of a Sparrow”

I picked up this little book years ago. It lived on my book shelf for years as I read others instead. It finally rose to the top of my reading list and I wish I had read it sooner.

Clare Kipps, the author, found Clarence as a hatchling on her door step. He had no feathers. His eyes were still closed. She fed the little mite some warm milk and went to bed thinking he wouldn’t make it through the night.

This common house sparrow was her companion for twelve years. He showed behaviors not seen in wild sparrows. She writes of his accomplishments and adventures, the devotion between them evident on every page.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper
Fact and fiction mix in this book of short stories and tongue twisters based on my fifty years living with goats.

My Goats

When I started writing books, I started with a book about goats, “Goat Games”, and have written about my goats in several other books. Most of the books are novels, but the actions and adventures are based on things my goats have done over the years.

The last and more serious book about goats was “For Love of Goats”. Goats have been part of my life for fifty years now. The things in this little book are based on my relationships with goats. The memoir pieces are actual happenings.

Nubian doe kid Opal will star in some animal stories
Nubian doe High Reaches Opal will be one star of the series Opal and Agate: Partners in Adventure. This is a planned series of picture books about Nubian goat kids exploring their world and getting into trouble, something kids are good at.

Picture Books and Animal Stories

I’ve been reading several picture books a week. Animal stories abound on the shelves. Two recent ones are “Togo” about the dog sleds taking serum to cure diptheria from Anchorage to Nome and “Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!” about a gardener trying to outwit some hungry bunnies.

The first of my Opal and Agate: Partners in Adventure series is half written and I am beginning to do sketches for it. Much as I enjoy writing novels, it is relaxing to again be remembering my goats.

Why Are Animal Stories so Appealing?

Perhaps these stories help us remember our relationship to the Earth and the animals that become important parts of our lives.

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Meet At the Laundromat

Many years ago I was asked to clean the local laundromat one day a week. As I washed my laundry there, I was already at the laundromat, so why not? Now you can meet At the Laundromat to find out more about this interesting and necessary place.

Any business, especially those open to the public, need cleaning every day. In this case, dirt, hair, dryer sheets, spilled detergent and softener along with bits of paper and spilled food make cleaning essential.

Behind the Scenes

People come into the laundromat with their baskets or bags of laundry, stuff them into a washer to wash, a dryer to dry, fold them up and cart them home again. Sometimes friends meet at the laundromat. They take the place for granted.

cover for "At the Laundromat" by Karen GoatKeeper
Find a topic, start gathering ideas and taking pictures, and a picture book seems to write itself.

At the laundromat I work at, there is the water softener to tend to, any broken machines to fix, change to put back into the machines after getting it out of the washers and dryers. All of that just keeps the place working.

Cleaning is what makes the place a good place for people to come into. Dirt and lint mount up fast. All kinds of things get left in the machines and must be taken out. Do you clean out your pockets before washing your clothes? Lots of people forget.

Folding clean clothes on tables sticky with spilled soda, coffee or mustard defeats the purpose of washing them in the first place. Washing clothes in a machine filled with animal hair doesn’t do much good either.

Using a Laundromat

People think this is easy. Easy until their quarters get stuck. Frustrating when a machine doesn’t work right. Efficient until they find some of their clothes disappeared.

At the Laundromat I work at, these problems do occur. The first is carelessness when feeding quarters into the slots. The second takes a phone call to use a different machine for free. The last takes better checking inside the machines to find clothes hidden inside.

Surprise Gift

Yes, I wrote this little picture book as a surprise for the laundromat owners as they are special people. But it wanted to be more than that. I hope it is.

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Announcing The Little Spider

Book marketing is not easy for me. It takes time and knowledge I don’t have. But I am announcing The Little Spider with a combination book launch party and signing.

This wasn’t really my idea. The Salem Public Library Head Librarian asked me to set up a table in the library. She’s seen the book file, is a picture book enthusiast and really likes it.

I’ve seen these author tables in the library before. It is a lonely vigil. Unless the author has lots of friends or readers or both, few people notice or stop at the table.

Finding an Audience

Sitting around waiting is not my favorite occupation. It doesn’t send the best message to get deeply involved in reading a book or typing away on a laptop.

Therefore, I need company, potential readers to stop by. And the library has such an audience available through their preschool reading program.

My author table will sit by itself. I will have a book reading. And the potential audience will be my target age group for my book.

On the Table

My author table needs to be large as there will be sixteen books on it. This includes my new novel “Hopes, Dreams and Reality”. Even though I will be announcing The Little Spider, I can possibly interest people in some of my other books.

All but “Goat Games” are in the library. They do get checked out now and then. However, I am still a relatively unknown author.

Looking To the Future

One of the best ways to encourage people to read my books is to get some people to read them and recommend them to others. So many people only try out books with lots of reviews which my books don’t have. I know people do read my books, but they don’t leave reviews.

Announcing The Little Spider in the midst of spider themed Halloween decorations with a book reading may encourage people to look my books over, maybe check a few out.

And, as a bonus, there may be time to read some of the stories and tongue twisters from “For Love of Goats” too.