Picture Book Den

What is a picture book? - Linda Strachan

2012-03-05T00:00:00.005Z

It is fascinating to see just how wide a spectrum the term 'picture book' can cover.

It can be a board book.
This is one of our family favourites that has stood the test of time. It is a series by Stephen Cartwright where the child has to find a different creature (Duck, Bird, Puppy etc) in each book.

In the original version there were no words in it at all, but in later additions a few words were added to each page. The simple familiar illustrations which are not too fussy, make this an easy book to read with babies and very young children.

I think I prefer the older version with no words at all and the discussion of the picture is something that makes sharing it with a child all the more fun.

A board book
is a lovely introduction for very young children and the thick board pages make it easier for little fingers to learn how to turn pages, without destroying the book in the process.

Probably what we think of most frequently, when we say picture book, is the familiar large format book for small children, where the pictures take up a lot of the space on the page.

This is where picture books come into their own as the images help to tell the story allowing the writer to cut out any unnecessary words and hone the story so that it flows and has rhythm.
The text may look deceptively simple and will often involve repetition, and sometimes rhyme.

Picture books for young children are designed to be read out loud. But for many people reading out loud is not something they have had much opportunity or occasion to do, quite often not since they themselves were novice readers at school.
For some parents it can be a new and at times daunting experience. But for the child the flow of the story is so much more important than the performance or any little mistakes the parent makes.

One of the joys of reading picture books is how inventive they can be and how even quite young children can understand layers in the story.

One great example of this is Man on the Moon by Simon Bartram. Bob does his normal job every day - clearing up the moon after the tourists have left - and he laughs at the idea that there might be such a thing as aliens.

The delightful thing is that behind him on the moon and even on the bus he takes home back on earth the reader can see little aliens are everywhere but Bob hasn't noticed them. Of course the children see the joke right away.

Another book I discovered recently is Baby Pie by Tom MacRae and Nick Ward. Three little trolls Oink, Boink and Moink are looking for a baby for their baby pie.

I wondered about this at first but my little granddaughter of two and a half loves it and she adores joining in when they say
'lick lips, pat belly, my oh my!'

But of course the trolls are... well I won't spoil it for you - just to say that the baby ends up smiling and the trolls get more than they bargained for! A delightful story, the twist at the end and repetition makes it fun to join in.

There are also longer picture books
where the story is much longer but the illustrations still take up around 50% of the book. As children get older they still delight in being read to but may be able to read it themselves.

Some stories are not written for one particular age group. We all love a good story and stories such as the tale of Greyfriars Bobby, that faithful little dog who slept every night on his master's grave for many years, delight old and young alike.
Growing up in Edinburgh the statue of Bobby was a familiar landmark so when I was asked to write a version of Greyfriars Bobby I was delighted. It was great to be working once again with illustrator Sally J. Collins, whose images capture scenes of Edinburgh beautifully.

I often come across children of 8 and 9 who feel they are too old for a picture book and understandably they are still asserting their right to be moving on from picture books, which can be seen as a sort of rite of passage. But I think it is a pity that we tend to think that picture books are only for young children (although if you look for them, there are a few that are quite scary and definitely for older children and adults).

Do you have a favourite picture book?

www.lindastrachan.com
Linda Strachan is the award winning author of over 60 books for all ages, from picture books to teen novels and writing handbook Writing For Children

Juggling by Abie Longstaff

2012-02-25T07:27:00.004Z

Like many people who only write part time, most of my working life involves juggling.

My particular balls to keep in the air are: my legal job, the children, the housework and my book writing.

Only, even though every week I vow it won’t happen, more often than not it is the book writing ball that falls to the floor while I struggle to keep the other ones in the air.

Why do I do this? It’s not that I don’t want to write. It’s not that I don’t value my writing. It’s just that, every time I am about to sit down and write, there is a school assembly, an extra work meeting, a karate grading, or a cake sale I have to attend and naturally, of all the juggling balls that can be moved, it’s the writing. And, once I have got out of the habit of writing it becomes easy to think, oo, I’ll just pop a wash on. Or oo that downstairs cupboard really needs cleaning out. Or, oo, I wonder what’s happening on Twitter.

This used to cause me great stress. I would berate myself week after week for failing to get any writing done and the end of every week would feel like failure. But then I decided that if couldn’t change my other commitments, what I could at least change was my attitude.

Now I still struggle to find time to sit down to write, but I have learned that an awful lot of writing time is really thinking time, particularly with picture books, where there is very little time spent sitting still at your desk writing. Picture books still take a lot of time, but the idea, the plot and character development can all be done while walking round the supermarket, doing the school run, at a café in my lunch hour, or sitting on the tube. I’ve learned that, if I just let myself relax and daydream, the book will slowly reveal itself.

This was proven the other day. During a very stressful half term juggling legal work and kids, I began to despair of getting anything done. Then one night I had the most incredible dream, which I quickly wrote out on waking.

Now I’ve just got to fiddle with the pace and the characterisation. I might do this while I sort out the cellar.

A Yen for Drawing: John Shelley on illustrating picture books for Japan

2012-02-24T12:44:00.000Z

Illus by John Shelley,
from 'The Month Brothers' (Miki House)

“Oh, so you’re an illustrator in Japan? You mean manga?”

That’s what people usually say when I mention my 21 year long career in Tokyo. Often followed by “you must love drawing big bug eyes” or some such. But in fact, perhaps surprising to some, I don’t draw manga, nor have I read much manga, although you see it everywhere in Japan. Attempting to draw like that would be very much like taking coals to Newcastle anyway, but I’d already established my illustration style before I moved to Tokyo, and illustration in Japan is an entirely distinct business from the world of comics and animation.

Cover illus by John Shelley,
'The Month Brothers' (Miki House)

Some children’s publishers do publish comic books and manga, but they are separate and often rival departments. Children’s publishers in Japan are often at great pains to develop works that are the antithesis of comics. Books that might wean readers away from low-culture comics towards slightly more sophisticated sentiments - imaginative fantasies, or graphic explorations.

Japan on the whole is a highly graphic aware society, and often delightfully escapist - images are everywhere, most children have a natural understanding of graphic imagery, whether through comics or other media. Anthropomorphised characters are used to personalise everything. Even the police departments have their own mascots.

Japan has a long heritage of children’s books, it remains today one of the strongest markets for books in the world, though like everywhere else the children’s market is suffering. Before WWII children’s literature thrived and was largely modernistic and cosmopolitan. At the forefront was the children’s magazine Kodomo no Kuni (Children’s Land)

One by one these outgoing publishers were censored, retired or imprisoned during the militarised period, but saw a strong resurgence after the War. Japan’s biggest publisher Kodansha expanded into children’s books in the 1950’s. Fukuinkan Shoten developed from the embers of Kodomo no Kuni, reviving the trend for subscription children’s magazines that continue today. After being imprisoned by the military government for pacifism, the owners of Iwasaki Shoten revived the company after the war.

Illus by John Shelley. From Hans Andersen's
'A Story of a Mother' (Hyoronsha, 2005)

The market for picture books is strong and varied, because it appeals to several different age-groups - on the one hand younger children who have yet to be hijacked by the lure of comics, but also a great many older picture book fans, adults who collect picture books, sometimes discovering work they missed during their comic-saturated youth. Thus the range of picture books produced in Japan is very wide, from fun stories for children, to very sophisticated works produced with adults in mind that may have comparatively little appeal to children.

Japanese children’s books are often strong on fantasy, some inhabit a fairy-tale escapism described as meruhen, from the German word ‘marchen’. Western editors are sometimes at a loss to understand these books, as, compared to UK titles, they seem to be slower-paced, ‘quiet’, or lightweight, are less driven by plot, and more about space and atmosphere.

Cover illus by John Shelley of
'Hoppy's New House'
(original magazine edition,
Fukuinkan Shoten 1996)

My own experience with Japanese publishers has been enlightening and very different from the West. I found I could be experimental in advertising and other commercial work, but for children’s books I was encouraged to draw extremely ‘English’, to be a graphic ambassador of my own culture. In a market that copies Western styles I could provide authentic European illustration by an authentic hand, but in a way that is conducive with Japanese tastes.

As mentioned, a lot of mid-range Japanese publishers are family businesses with long heritages. Unlike the West, staff on the whole do not switch companies, however they’re often rotated around their company, which can be very confusing. Last year’s editor is now working in the publicity department etc. The new picture book editor may have just been re-assigned from the magazine section.

'The Elves and the Cobbler', illus by John Shelley,
Picture-book magazine (Ookina Pocket, 2007)

Some publishers (notably Fukuinkan) launch picture books in paperback first as part of a subscription-based magazine series, then later select the most popular titles for trade hardcover editions.

On the down side I personally find Japanese editors often commission me with an agenda - they have very clear ideas what they want their book to look like, and thus can be quite demanding to the point of stifling. Patience is a necessity. Some editors like to take things very slowly at planning stage, but then ask for unrealistically short final artwork deadlines.

Illus by John Shelley.
From Hans Andersen's
'The Shadow' (Hyoronsha, 2005)

How do I cope with the language you might wonder? Well, my spoken ability is fairly developed now (though it wasn’t always the case!). I don’t read and write Japanese as well though, so in the case of novels I look for the English edition! My own stories I write in English with an eye to how it will sound in Japanese, then roughly translate it. The editor (who speaks no English) gets both versions - my Japanese version for a rough idea of the text, and the finished English which is sent off to their translator for a corrected Japanese version. I have illustrated some picture books and early readers entirely in Japanese though.

Print-runs are generally conservative, as traditionally Japanese bookshops tend to buy books outright from publishers, so only take what they think they can definitely sell (I’m told this is changing now). But there are a lot of bookshops in Japan, the book trade is brisk and self-sustaining.

One thing you never see though is discounted books. One price only. Another thing you don’t come across so much is outright humour. I mean belly-laugh funny books for kids. Humour when used is mostly very gentle, readers are encouraged to dream, but not so much to laugh! But then there’s also the comic and anime industry....

Many thanks to John Shelley for
being our February Guest Blogger
at the Picture Book Den, 2012

For further insights into Japanese children’s publishing I highly recommend downloading some of the newsletters of Tokyo SCBWI.

JohnShelley Illustration
http://www.jshelley.com/top.html http://www.childrensillustrators.com/John/
http://storybookillustrators.com/portfolio/john-shelley
Blogs:
http://johnshelley.blogspot.com/
(English）
http://shelleyjapan.blogspot.com/
(日本語)
Twitter: Godfox

Pick A Book, Any Book! by Pippa Gooodhart

2012-02-19T01:00:00.002Z

The figures have just been published on library book borrowings for the year 2010-2011. Adult borrowing is down, but children's book borrowing is up. The total number of borrowings of children's books for that year was a staggering 96.8 million ... and that's in a country with a total population of about 60 million! That is surely encouraging. And the detail of the books and authors borrowed is, I think, equally surprising and positive. People borrow books very differently from the way that they buy books. Take a look at the list of the top four hundred most borrowed authors in that year - http://www.plr.uk.com/mediaCentre/mostBorrowedAuthors/top250Authors/2010-2011Top400Authors.pdf

Of the top fifty most borrowed authors for both adults and children, I reckon that eleven of them are primarily picture book authors. Our wonderful children's Laureate and creator of the classic and much-loved Gruffalo, Julia Donaldson, comes at no surprise as number 7 on the list, but to find Eric Hill (number 28) of Spot the Dog fame so far ahead of Stephen King (100), Jeffrey Archer (101), J K Rowling (102) or Stephanie Meyer (121) surely gladens the picture book enthusiast's heart!

Why do picture books get borrowed so much? Because, I think, they are sometimes seen as 'not many words for all that money', and perceived as the kind of books that children will grow out of. Parents and children may be unsure which will be those books which will absolutely hit the spot with an individual child; which will be those magical ones which get asked for again and again and again. Ideal, then, to borrow lots of books for free, and then perhaps buy the ones which prove themselves to be those key childhood books which should stay with us, both internally and externally, forever.

The very best thing about borrowing picture books from libraries is that it puts the power of choice into the hands of very young children. There is no cost to borrowing generous numbers of books which will only have to be housed temporarily, so parents let their children borrow books freely, letting them choose books which those adults might not be inclined to buy ... because "That one is too old/too young for you", "There's nothing to that one, so it's not worth the money", or (I saw this a lot when I worked in a children's bookshop) even, "You've already got that one at home!" Libraries give children the freedom to learn how to choose, practising that vital art of selection on collections of thousands of pounds worth of wonderful books. And if they make 'mistakes', those mistakes don't matter. Lucky children! Isn't it all rather wonderful?!

Julia Donaldson is going to guest blog on this site next month, but I'm proud to say that two of us regular Picture Book Den bloggers also appear along with Julia in that top 400 list. Malachy Doyle and I both make it to positions in the three hundreds, rather pleasingly above such names as Philip Pullman, Jane Austen, Rev Awdry, Jamie Oliver and Katy Price (now there's an interesting party to be had!). High five, Malachy!

The Genesis of a Picture Book by Malachy Doyle

2012-02-13T08:00:00.007Z

‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ they always ask.

I point to my skull.

‘Imagination,’ I say. ‘Imagination and experience.’

I always said I’d never have a dog.

Everyone kept saying, ‘You like walking, Malachy. Why not get a dog?’

To which I’d reply, ‘I’m the dog. I need walkies every day or I go stark staring mad. A dog would fuss me. A dog would chase away birds and otters. I couldn’t think about stories. I’d have to think of the dog.’

But then one day, nearly a year ago, a wet bedraggled collie pup came to the back door.

‘I’m lost and I’m hungry,’ she said. 'Can I live with you?

‘I don’t want a dog, I'm afraid,’ I replied. ‘I don’t need a dog. You'd better go home, pup.’

I couldn’t concentrate on the story I was writing.

She was outside, waiting. Outside, whining.

‘I’m still lost,’ she said, when I couldn't bear it any longer. ‘Still wet,’ she said.

I found a piece of bailing twine and took her round the island. No one had ever seen her before.

I now have a dog. She’s called Juno. She’s gone from being a wet bedraggled wobbly little collie to my favourite ever pet.

We walk the beaches every day. She chases the waves, barking like a mad thing. I think she thinks they’re sheep, but watching her do it never fails to make me smile, no matter how bad the writing’s going.

She’s a wet bedraggled happy young collie. The house is full of sand.

I got myself a dog I love. I got myself a picture book out of her too, like you do, and by happy coincidence, it’s officially published on Valentine’s Day - today!

In Welsh, as Sigl-di-gwt (which means Shake-your-Tail). In English, as Collywobble. With illustrations by the wonderful Petra Brown, who keeps getting better and better. And who chose to draw a tricolour collie, without knowing a single thing about Juno.

It's about the sweetest little sheepdog you ever did see. He lives on a farm, in the Welsh highlands (where I used to live before decamping to my Donegal island), and when the first snows of winter come, his courage is tested big time.

But we all know where he's really come from - imagination and experience.

And we all know who he really is - my Juno.

It's tricky, finding the right name, by Paeony Lewis

2012-02-09T00:24:00.001Z

Writers flounder if they can’t find the right names for their characters. Even with picture books, the story doesn’t come alive in our imagination. Mary Hoffman says, “I simply can't write a character till I know their name. And if I get the name wrong, the character won't come right till I change it. Right from the start I instinctively know the names of some characters. This happened with Grace of Amazing Grace."

Unfortunately not all names and characters burst into life, fully formed. So how does a writer decide on a name? Of course, all writers work differently. However, sometimes writers use the names of young family and friends. Diana Kimpton remembers that, “In The Bear Father Christmas Forgot, the child, Madeleine, was named after my niece who had just been born.”

Whilst author, Ragnhild Scamell, says, “Although I live in Britain, I’m Danish by birth. Danish names often suggest themselves to me, and that makes life a little difficult, so I frequently end up using the names of children I know and love.” In fact, there is one Danish name, Vigo, that Ragnhild does intend to use in a future picture book. Vigo is her grandson and Ragnhild wants to celebrate her ‘Little Viking’ who is battling to walk.*

With my stories, I rarely use the names of somebody I know. Instead, names leap out at me from the pages of a book of baby names that sits on a shelf above my desk. In No More Biscuits (followed by No More Yawning), my characters Florence and Arnold began life with the names Becky and Squiffy Duck. Then they became Becky and Floppy Rabbit. Then Florence and Rabbity. And finally Florence and Arnold.

Why did I keep changing the names? As the story developed over many months, the characters altered. Cute, eager-to-please Becky became strong-willed, independent, imaginative Florence. The old Becky liked to drag Rabbity around by his ear. The new Florence understood that a stuffed rabbit hated having his ear pulled. Then the toy became a monkey and as Arnold is totally real to Florence, he had to have a real name, not a silly toy name.

Not every character’s name is borrowed from a child or found in a book of baby names. Jane Clarke has an intriguing method: “I begin with a thesaurus, listing words that fit the animal I want to write about, and then I try morphing each word until I find one or more that makes a familiar-sounding name. For example, Gilbert is a shark and his name incorporates thefishy word gill. I like a name that sounds sturdy, friendly, slightly unusual and timeless - and it makes me very happy when I can find it.”

Sometimes publishers want to change the names we’ve given our characters. In Best Friends or Not?, the two little polar bears were originally named Lucy and Eva. I can understand why the publisher wanted to use more general, Arctic names, but it took a bit of getting used to! They suggested Nanook, and I came up with Suka (a popular name for Arctic husky dogs), and Nanook and Suka were born.

The same publisher helped Moira Munro with one of her characters in the Hamish series. “In a surge of writing confidence, I was inspired to name the big bear ‘Whizziguff’ in my story. Now that is original! The publishers kindly suggested we call him ‘Big Bear'."

Big Bear? Are you thinking that’s a bit generic? I’ve been thinking about this and I feel that in some instances general names like Big Bear, Little Duck, Elephant and Mouse are the best choice. I’m not sure I can say precisely why – it just feels right. Can others cast light on this? Maybe it’s linked to traditional oral storytelling where a character is more easily introduced,visualised and remembered if they’re just called the princess, stepmother, witch, little pig, etc. But that doesn’t explain why we often use names like Big Bear and Little Duck in printed books. Perhaps we want a more general emotional response to the character, rather than individualism?

Of course, it doesn’t really matter how a character is named, as long as it’s the right name. Having said that, sometimes a name is changed in an overseas edition of a British book. In a South Korean edition of my I’ll Always Love You, the bear Alex becomes Bobo. That’s fine by me as I think Bobo is a cute name and less ‘Western’ than Alex. Anyway, we seldom have a clue what has been done to the text because few British children’s authors can read languages such as Korean, Chinese or Arabic!

I wonder if anyone knows the most popular names in picture books published outside the UK? It would be interesting to discover more about this. Plus I’m always intrigued to hear how other writers decide on the names of their fictional characters. Do tell!

Paeony Lewis is a children’s book author http://www.paeonylewis.com/

*Find out more about Ragnhild's grandson, Vigo, who wants to walk. http://www.vigoswishtowalk.co.uk/

Shrunken Heads and Scary Fish. The Case for More Unpredictable Weirdness in Picture Books. Moira Butterfield

2012-02-04T10:36:00.002Z

Recently I visited the fabulous Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, a frankly bonkers collection of artefacts brought back from all over the globe. Row after row of wooden cabinets stretched around the rooms behind, stuffed with gloriously unpredictable objects. At the front sat the original Dodo skeleton that inspired Lewis Carroll to write Alice in Wonderland. A ritual Pacific island statue lurked in a far corner, looking exactly like one of the monsters in Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. Other personal favourites included a delicate cloak made from seal intestines and a war helmet made from a porcupine fish.

Already primed by the Dodo and the wild thing to think of childhood, I saw a display of shrunken heads and was instantly pitched back to my parents’ home. As a child I had obsessions with particular illustrations in my small store of books. I secretly studied certain images again and again, while my imagination went on unpredictable journeys. For reasons unknown, my parents owned a book about the headhunters of New Guinea, and I used to stare long and hard at the macabre sepia photos of posing tribesmen.

E. H. Shephard’s illustrations for A.A. Milne poems provided me with a couple of other favourite pictures, including bears skulking on the pavement, ready to eat children who stepped on the cracks. In my Beatrix Potter books it wasn’t the rabbit in clothes that fascinated me, but a terrifying giant fish on its way up from the depths to eat Mr Jeremy Fisher.

All my favourite images had a touch of oddness and the unexplained, and often an implied threat.

I’ve been asking around to find out if other adults can remember having an obsessive interest in specific images as young children. It makes for a good conversation. Some people name something straight away. Others have come back to me a little later with a sudden memory. A number of those I asked remembered odd, mysterious or slightly threatening pictures. Not everyone - but enough for me to think I’m not alone. It turns out I wasn’t a uniquely greedy, ghoulish and cruel child…Phew!

We have been lucky enough to have grown up with a richly inventive and unfettered picture book illustration tradition, fostered by the higgledy-piggledy museum collections and strange imaginings of previous centuries. Illustrators were not afraid to embrace the surreal, the odd and sometimes the scary - not to prove a point or ram home an issue, but simply for the glorious sake of it, expecting children to react as the illustrators did, with interest.

Surreal unpredictable elements have generally disappeared from mainstream picture books in the last few years, rendered safe and predictable by the demands of the international market. There are, of course, exceptions, but most picture books are, in the main, all soothing reassurance. We don’t want to give children nightmares about giant fish biting anyone’s feet off, do we?

No child would react well to that kind of psychologically disturbing image…right?

Wrong, surely?

I, for one, hope that children still get the chance, somehow, somewhere, to be secretly fascinated and sometimes deliciously scared by images of strangeness. I’d recommend your local museum.

Pacing a Picture Book Story by Lynne Garner

2012-01-29T15:00:00.001Z

It doesn’t matter if you're writing a 70,000-word novel or a 600-word picture book you have to create a story with a good plot and that's well paced. Unlike a novel when writing a picture book you know how many pages you are working with as there are industry standards.The picture books I write normally adhere to the traditional 12 double-page spread formula. So when I start to work on a new story I take a piece of A4 paper and fold it to create 12 sections. To show you how I use this piece of paper to pace a story I'll describe how I wrote Captain and Nugget.

I knew the story was going to be about two dogs, Captain and Nugget. I had decided the theme was going to be about learning to share and I knew how this lesson was going to be learnt. So all I had to do was pace the scenes on my piece of paper.

On the first page I introduced one of the characters, being Captain. The next page I used to introduce both the second character, Nugget and the problem, Captain learning to share. I then skipped to the last page because I knew I wanted a happy ending with Captain realising that sharing has its benefits.

So by plotting the first two pages and the last I was left with nine. Having nine pages meant I was able to use the magic number three. Basically for an interesting story you can't have your character solve the problem on the first attempt, this would be boring. You shouldn't allow them solve the problem on the second go, you've not built up enough tension. Having them continue to fail would frustrate the reader so you need them succeed on the third. So I was able to split the nine pages into three sets of three, which allowed me to evenly pace the story.

I've used this method of pacing in many of my books and I'm sure I'll continue to use it, as it appears to work for me. In fact just this afternoon I grabbed my A4 note pad, created 12 sections and started to plot and pace out a new story.

Footnote:

When I'd finished this story I used it as part of an illustration course I was studying and at that time I also decided to turn it into an eBook (Amazon.com - Amazon.co.uk). As I no longer had to stick to the rigid 12 double-page spreads I increased the pages to 23 and was still able to create a story I felt was well paced.

My blog: Fuelled By Hot Chocolate

My 'Too Dangerous' Picture Book by Karen King

2012-01-26T15:00:00.002Z

I've had a few picture books published over the years but my most popular one, a lift-the flap book called Silly Moo! almost never got published. It looks harmless enough, doesn't it? Yet several publishers thought the story was too dangerous for small children.

I can see your brain ticking here. What on earth did the cow get up to? Did she drive off with the farmer's tractor and crash it? Climb the tree to pick the apples? Go ice skating on the lake?

Nope. The basic story plot is that an apple falls out of the tree onto Cow's head and she forgets where she lives so wanders around the farm trying to get into the other animals' homes. They all get fed up so decide to drop another apple onto Cow's head hoping she'll get her memory back and remember where she lives.

Still can't see the dangerous bit? Well, let me tell you the gist of my conversation with the first editor who turned it down:

Editor (on phone): We really like this story and would like to publish it.
Me (getting excited): Oh, that's great.
Editor: We need to change it a bit though.
Me (a bit wary): Really? In what way?
Editor (firmly): Well, it's far too dangerous.
Me (puzzled): Dangerous? (wracks my brains) I don't understand. What's dangerous about it?
Editor: Well, the apple falls on the cow's head. That's very dangerous to have something falling on someone's head.
Me (baffled): But apples do fall out of trees.
Editor: And later on in the story the hen drops the apple on the cow's head again.
Me: Er, yes...but it's just an apple.
Editor (sternly):What if the children copy it and go around dropping apples on each other's heads. It's very irresponsible.
Me: I'm sure they won't.
Editor (very firmly): We can't risk it. it's far too dangerous. We need to change it.
Me: But it's vital to the story. I need the apple to drop on Cow's head so that she gets a bit fuzzy-headed and forgets where she lives.
Editor: We'll have to think of another way to for the cow to lose her memory (thinks for a moment) I know, perhaps she can be running down the hill and she falls over and rolls down to the bottom and hits her head ....

Now I think that sounds far more dangerous than an apple falling on Cow's head!

Similar versions of this conversation was repeated by several mainstream publishers over the next couple of years. I'd almost given up hope of getting Silly Moo! published when the wonderful team at Top That Publishing said that they didn't think an apple falling on Cow's head was dangerous at all, suggested making it into a lift-the-flap book and published it.

Now I know that we children's authors have to write responsibily and be aware of the young age of our readers but I honestly think that sometimes the 'gatekeepers' can be too cautious. What do you think? Have you ever had a picture book turned down because it's too dangerous, not politically-correct or 'unsuitable' in any other way?

www.karenking.net

Growing wings... by Linda Strachan

2012-01-23T09:20:00.001Z

This is not a blog about fairies or flying horses

or dragons

or even birds.
Just so that you know that up front! (Actually there may be mention of one bird, but her wings are already fully grown.)

Neither is it a blog about sprouting a set of beautiful feathery wings - in case you had that in mind - which is probably just as well. I imagine it would make getting dressed a real problem!

I wanted to tell you about how a book, or a series, can grow wings and take off ... often way beyond our expectations!

This week the 10th book in the Hamish McHaggis series (Hamish McHaggis and the Great Glasgow Treasure Hunt ) will be ready to be sent off to the printers.
The book won't be launched until later April 2012 but it is so exciting to have arrived at this final stage.

Hamish McHaggis and the Great Glasgow Treasure Hunt

It is wonderful to be back working with Illustrator Sally J. Collins and I know that neither of us thought, when we started working together in 2004, that it would be the start of such a wonderful and exciting journey.


Sally and Linda with Hamish McHaggis	,

We have a lot of fun with the characters (Hamish- a cuddly haggis, Rupert- an English hedgehog, Jeannie- a rather dippy osprey and Angus- a cheeky pine marten.). There have been some exciting book launches in amazing places such as Edinburgh Castle, The Falkirk Wheel, Stirling Castle, Glamis Castle and even at Balmoral, and this year we will be launching the latest book in Glasgow's famous Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

Sally and I work closely together and as soon as I have an outline for the story she begins to sketch out some ideas and work up any new characters.
In this book we have an urban fox (Maggie) and her little fox cubs so Sally immediately began to work on getting Maggie just right.

Our animal characters don't wear clothes but they do have accessories, such as Hamish's tartan tammy and Angus has his red cap.

Rupert often wears his glasses and he has a camera and binoculars. Jeannie the osprey likes to wear pink beads and for this book she is sporting some new beads with a Rennie Macintosh style rose on them.
So, as you can see here, we decided that Maggie the fox would have a handbag!

Once the story is complete Sally and I discuss each spread and nothing is set in stone until we are both happy with it. What works so well for us is the way we get to bounce ideas off each other, right up until the book is in the final stages.

When I speak to people about writing picture books I think this is how they imagine most authors and illustrators work. But I am fairly sure that we are in the minority.

I have written a fair number of highly illustrated books but I have never met or even been given the chance to speak to any of the other illustrators while the book is in progress.

Working on a Hamish book at sally's house

So working with sally is a completely different experience and one I enjoy. One reason that it works so well is because we actually live quite near each other and can meet up regularly to exchange ideas, but also because we respect each other's opinion and expertise.

I travel a lot, visiting schools and talking about my books, and the Hamish McHaggis books are a favourite with the children, not only here in Scotland. (you can find out a little about my trip to New Zealand schools last year here on my blog (Writing the) BOOKWORDS

Sally and I were absolutely delighted when Scottish Book Trust (SBT) developed a set of teacher resources based around the Hamish books. Sally and I went through the books and listed some of the things we thought would be of interest and the lovely people at SBT added other ideas and also gathered material devised by some very enthusiastic teachers, as case studies, to provide these wonderful FREE downloadable resources for teachers.

I have always found it fascinating to see how much I discover about each new book. It can be startling what you can find in a story to work with, and I often find things that I had never really thought about when I was writing it. This becomes even more obvious when the time comes to think about how I am going to present the book to children.

So now it is time to have a deeper look and check out the wings our new book is about to grow -

www.lindastrachan.com
Linda Strachan is the award winning author of over 60 books including Writing For Children pub A. & C. Black.

2012-01-20T15:32:00.000Z

The whole world in our hands by Abie Longstaff

One of my favourite things about making picture books is creating a world for the reader to delve into. I love inventing a fully rounded character and giving him/her a home, a job, friends and hobbies.

Ideally, I want readers to bond with my character and know all about him/her, but I frequently run up against my evil enemy Mr Word Count Limit, so I have had to think of cunning ways to get around him.

1) Use illustration to develop character. If I don’t have the word count to talk about my character’s mum, I add in a photo in a frame in the background.

2) Hide extra characters or snippets of story in the images. My character has a whole host of friends in the background, getting on with their lives and I love the idea that a child will get joy out of suddenly noticing an extra character or funny antic (the Richard Scarry effect.) A quick way of doing this is to use characters who are already well known, for example in the background spreads of my Fairytale Hairdresser book, I used familiar nursery rhyme and folk characters.

3) Use illustrations to create juxtaposition with the text, for example the text ‘no one could see the wolf’ could be accompanied by a drawing of the wolf hiding behind the tree. Children love feeling clever and being the one to spot something the characters in your story can’t. It helps them feel like they are really inside the world.

4) Don’t forget the grownups. They will be reading your story for the millionth time (hopefully) and it by then they might be very bored (I speak from experience). Put something in for the parents too – an extra detail or a textual joke in the illustration could really help when reading the book aloud at the end of a long day.

5) You can even use one book to give a clue about another. In this spread from Pirate House Swap (illustrated by the wonderful Mark Chambers), one of the ads on the left is for the Fairytale Hairdresser.

6) Try not to annoy your illustrator. I put my hand up to this one. I make copious illustration notes. Some illustrators like it. Some HATE it. Luckily Lauren Beard, my illustrator for The Fairytale Hairdresser, put up with my suggestions and added a load of better ones of her own. Her fantastic drawings really made the world we created come alive. I’ve tracked down my notes and her finished version:

My notes: Now the hair is tamed we can see the tower more clearly – lots of different sized cauldrons with coloured steam coming out, black cats dozing on shelves, spiders hanging from webs, bats flying around the tower, lots of books with names like ‘Relocation Relocation to the Forest.’ ‘The Grand Designs Guide to Gingerbread Houses.’ Frogs are playing on the books. Witch is wearing an apron saying ‘I’m charming!’ and holding a book of ‘Forgetfulness Potions’

The result (you can click on the image to make it bigger):

Little Nelly And The Importance Of Pictures In Books, by Pippa Goodhart

2012-01-14T15:00:00.003Z

I have started the new year with an authorial treat; the publication of a new picture book. It is called ‘Little Nelly’s Big Book’, and it is a story that absolutely had to be a picture book rather than any other kind of book. In fact the story concludes with –

‘Which just goes to show why books should always have pictures.’

Why are pictures so vital to this particular story?

Well, one of the glories of pictures is that even very young children can ‘read’ them, long before they can read text. Children study pictures in picture books and see for themselves what is happening, and they notice when what they see does or doesn’t tally with what the book’s words (read out loud by somebody) are telling them. There is wonderful potential excitement created when there is a deliberate gap, or even a contradiction, between words and pictures, because a child can, and will, fill that gap with their own deductions … that apparently nobody else has noticed!

The child audience can know more about what is really going on in the story than the words tell. They can know more than the adult reading those words seems to know, and certainly know more than the characters living the story know. That knowing and understanding leads to anticipating possibilities that make the child an essential co-creator of the overall story, along with the author and illustrator and designer; the story is their story too.

‘Little Nelly’s Big Book’ begins with a picture of a small elephant reading a Big Book Of Knowledge. The text reads –

‘Little Nelly looked in a book, and found out …

Turn the page

…that she was a mouse.’

We can see exactly why Little Nelly thinks that she is a mouse because we can read the book that tells her that mice can be grey, and that they have big ears and skinny tails. Nelly has ticked all those things. She’s been quite logical in working out that she is a mouse. The text tells Nelly’s point of view, but looking at the pictures we know that she’s got it terribly wrong because she isn’t a mouse at all, and an elephant is very different from a mouse! What in the world is going to happen to her now that she thinks she is a mouse? Read the book, and find out!

www.pippagoodhart.co.uk

A Little Bit of Trauma goes a Long Way by Wendy Meddour

2012-01-12T16:00:00.003Z

When you tell people you write picture books, they assume that you're a right old softy with an enormous fluffy toy collection and a tendency to sing in the rain ....

Sometimes, I go along with them: "Oh yes - I have an altogether happy disposition and love ALL babies - even when they scream."

But sometimes, just sometimes, I feel the need to tell the truth!

My rhyming picture books aren't the product of sugar and cuddles. Oh no. Far from it. My picture books are always induced by .... TRAUMA. Not a fluffy pink rabbit in sight!

Now, don't log off or be alarmed. Trauma isn't necessarily bad. (Well, technically it might be). But what I mean is, it gives rise to wonderful things ....

Take, for example, my first picture book (Ooh, that sounds a bit vain! Forgive me: 'trauma gives rise to mediocre things' doesn't really work ). Anyway, I was suffering (nay, nearly dying) from heat-stroke on the 10th floor of an apartment block in North Africa - and the temperature had just reached 50 Degrees Celsius! I repeat: 50 DEGREES CELSIUS! (I don't care if that was in 'the shade'. We hadn't been in 'the shade'.) And we couldn't get out because we were on the edge of a busy city and exit routes were blocked by forest fires.

(I'm behind one of these stripy curtains, busy being nearly-dead:)

Though I like to think of myself as a bold explorer, my delicate constitution is not made for such temperatures. Whilst everyone else was coping admirably, I was most certainly not. Friends sipped mint tea in an adjoining room whilst I panted and gasped for breath.

To be honest, I wasn't at my most glamorous either. You see, thanks to the kindness of a woman called Zarfa, my clothes were stuffed with bags of frozen chickpeas and my feet were in a bucket of mineral water. (The taps had all run dry).

But just when the situation seemed hopeless, something wonderful happened. You guessed it: the MUSE arrived!!!

And my brain wouldn't stop ..... my first ever picture book was born!

Now, I'm still sworn to secrecy - but think heroines stuck in towers - desperate to get out and fed up of waiting for a prince. (Oh, and I should point out that she doesn't die of heat stroke or fill her top with frozen chickpeas). Of course, I had to rework it (again and again and again), until it finally went 'click'. But what I produced was really rather nice and publishers actually loved it.

In summary: without a bit of trauma - my picture book career would never have begun. It was worth it - frozen chickpeas and all! So you can keep your fluffy bunnies: we don't need them. Picture-book writers prefer to live on the edge!

Or is it just me?

(Note from the author: 'If it is just me, please delete this entire post from your memory immediately. Many thanks.')