One of my followers from Instagram sent me this request:
“Hi, Janet! I’m writing a book about the experience of people immigrating to the US, specifically focused on the experience of children (ages 4-8).”
That’s wonderful! When my family immigrated to the United States, I was in middle school. My English speaking abilities were close to nil yet I was still incredibly opinionated. Moving to the US didn’t mean I abandoned the rich culture and history I came from.
At the time, I had a lot I wanted to share and very little vocabulary to express them. So I am extremely pleased that you are writing a children’s book on immigrants. We could always use more books on diversity and inclusion for all ages.
Let’s start by taking a look at the age range you presented: 4 through 8. This corresponds to Kindergarten to the third grade. Children in this age range usually enjoy picture books with some graduating to beginner chapter books. For this blog post, we will be focusing on writing picture books since that fits your target demographics better.
How Hard Can It Be?
Rosie and I love reading picture books together. We’ve read over 600 different books together. Since I’ve never written a picture book before, I’m turning to the experts.
There are surprisingly few books about writing picture books. After browsing a few of my local libraries and purchasing some titles from stores, I found Ann Whitford Paul’s Writing Picture Books to be the most helpful.
Writing Picture Books: A Hands-On Guide From Story Creation to Publication
This book, by Ann Whitford Paul, touches on almost every topic for authoring a picture book. The book does not cover ideation and marketing. While she has a couple of chapters on working with publishers and self-publishing, those are definitely not the focus of this book.
Marketing is becoming a big part of being a modern author since there are very few titles publishers will prioritize with marketing dollars. So be sure to find other titles that will teach you how to hawk your wares (even if you have a publisher) when you embark on the journey of picture book writing.
I also interviewed Patricia Tanumihardja, who authored and published many of my favorite picture books.
Patricia Tanumihardja, children’s book and cookbook author
Patritica Tanumihardja is the author of Ramen for Everyone, The Sugar Plum Bakers, and Jimmy’s Shoes. Pat was born in Jakarta to Indonesian-Chinese parents. She’s been reading and writing since high school. Her desire to write children’s books combined her love for good food and her wish to celebrate diversity through words.
Basic of the Basics
Audience and Word Count
Picture books are aimed at two audiences: the children listening to the story and looking at the pictures to form meaning of the words, and the adults reading the text aloud.
While there are no official word count limits, Ann Whitford Paul recommended less than 500 words if you are targeting children between the ages of two to five. Shift to 400 to 900 words for older children with longer attention spans and understand more complex storylines.
500 seems to be the magic number if you are planning to submit your story for publication. “When writing a picture book, word economy is very important because most publishers are looking for stories that are 500 words or less, unless it’s a biography,” Patritica Tanumihardja advises.
Illustrations Consideration
Just like there are singer-songwriters, there are children’s books authors who are also illustrators. If you are one of these magical beings, here are some picture book basics when planning out your art.
The standard picture books tend to have 32 pages. These thirty-two pages include the pasted-down end pages as well as one page for copyright information and one page for the title. The remaining 28 pages make twelve to thirteen double-page spreads, depending on whether you want to include end pages for the author’s note.
There is no standard size for picture books. Beatrix Potter made the beloved Peter Rabbit book series intentionally small for the little hands to handle them. Common picture book sizes today are 8x8in, 8x10in, 10x8in, and 10x10in.
While modern printing will allow you to create however many pages and for whatever size, the important consideration here is cost.
Picture books are expensive to produce, compared to books without pictures, since the pages have to be printed in color. Therefore, sticking with the standard page count and opting for a smaller book size will help you share a story without driving up the costs for the adult purchasing the book..
Note that if you are a writer who plans to submit your work to a publisher, don’t worry about finding an illustrator before sending your work in.
“It’s like a super secret in children’s publishing,” said Tanumihardja, “but the illustrator and the author do not communicate at all during the process for most cases.”
I confirmed this with Sue Fliess, author of dozens of children’s books. For her book Little Red Rhyming Hood, Fliess was shown a few designs of Little Red, but she didn’t see the finished book product until all the illustrations were completed for many of her other books.
Basic of the Basics
The heart of writing for a picture book is about storytelling to a very young audience. Children want to be amused, entertained, and amazed through stories—same as anybody. It is one of the essences of being human. When you open a book to read to a child, you are making a promise that magic is going to happen in the next five to ten minutes.
“[These books] tell a simple story, one that often deals with how something works or how a problem is solved,” said Nancy Lamb in her book The Writer’s Guide to Crafting Stories for Children.
While crafting a book for young children requires some special technique, it still retains some of the generality of making a good story, namely having an engaging plot with a beginning, middle, and end and with well developed characters.
Jim Trelease, author of the Read-Aloud Handbook, says that a child’s first books should “provide joy.”
There are many ways to capture and keep the attention of your young audience. Your book can present them with an intriguing situation or challenge their imagination. Many picture books have animals as characters for this reason—to take the reader to a world that is completely different from our own. With animals as main characters, you can also focus on the experience of that character without the complication of gender, race, shape, and size.
Personally, I am always delighted by picture books that feature a diverse cast of children. Representation really matters. It is important for children to see characters that look like them doing totally awesome things. So if you’re writing a book with a minority protagonist, I applaud you!
Children’s books often use repetitive language, where a sound or a phrase is reiterated multiple times. You can use rhythm in your writing, which will make reading them a pleasant experience for both the adult and the child audiences. While you do not need to make the end of each sentence rhyme, it helps the adult reading the story to make the experience more fun, interesting, or soothing.
Revising Your Drafts
Since picture books are short, you’ll have ample opportunities to revise your initial draft multiple times to get the best result.
“Completing a draft of your story isn’t the end of the writing process; it’s the beginning” writes Paul. Throughout Writing Picture Books, Paul encourages writers to make many revisions, changing point-of-view of each draft. For example, if you wrote your first draft using the third person’s perspective, try rewriting it from the main character’s first person perspective. Although these drafts may not work out, there may be interesting plot points you can add to your main draft.
Tanumihardja also uses this technique: “I’ll change the point of view and rewrite the story from the beginning. I’ve gone from first person to third person, or third person to first person, and every time I discover something new about my story that I can change to make it better.” Tanumihardja said Jimmy’s Shoes took her 10 to 12 revisions.
Connecting with Others
A great way to continue your writer’s journey is to connect with others in the industry. For example, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) holds conferences where writers can meet publishers, editors, and agents. You can sign up to have your work critiqued by an expert in the industry and form a writers’ group with fellow authors.
Beyond connecting with publishing experts, you can befriend other picture book authors. Together, you can collaborate on events so you can connect with parents, guardians, librarians, and educators who are likely to buy or carry your book.
After doing much of the research for this blog, it has inspired me to try my hand in writing a picture book as well. I wanted to recount an experience I had at a recent protest so kids and adults alike could better understand what it’s like. I wanted to specifically highlight experiences from women of color, so I guess the commenter who reached out to me and I have similar goals with our books. I hope this post will help you and I look forward to sharing our experiences together.
Follow me on Instagram @janetbruins to follow my author’s journey! And don’t forget to subscribe below to get email notification when new blog posts come out.