Happy New Year! Over the next few weeks I’ll be knocking at your inbox with a series on the steps I took before getting to work on the creation of my debut picture book as author/illustrator. These posts are all available now on my Patreon as a perk for my patrons. If you subscribe to my substack, you won’t miss out, you just have to wait a little longer.
So in my last Substack, I asked you to read some contemporary children’s books and then try and figure out the differences between today’s picture books, and the picture books you remember from yon. It’s a good starting point for understanding what picture books of today are about. It’s amazing how many people want to write a picture book, but can’t name the last one they read that was published recently (within the last 12 months).
Why is that so important? Well, most picture books have a short shelf life for the intended audience. Unless you write an evergreen that is successful with every generation (and pretty rare), you are looking to attract today’s generation. What values are their parents trying to instil in them? What values are widely held as important in today’s society? What kind of language is used? How do we depict people in illustrations? How are gender roles portrayed? Are there any messages/morals being demonstrated? How diverse are the characters?
Because all of this changes periodically.
And if you are using books from five years ago as your yardstick, you’ve probably missed the boat on what’s going to sell in today’s ever-changing market.
Once you’ve analysed enough contemporary picture books, you will have an idea of what is important to the publishers, parents and children of today. And that’s the order you have to impress those in - publishers, parents, children. Because parents don’t decide what gets published, and young children don’t often choose the books they want to buy on their own. That’s not to say write for the benefits of publishers, just bear that information in mind.
Now you need to decide which route you want to take: humorous, emotive, moralistic etc. What category do you want your books to be in? Which ones did you enjoy reading the most? Which ones appealed to you the most? Which ones bored you to tears? Which ones couldn’t you relate to or understand? Because chances are, the ones which appealed to you the most are your category. That means that type of book needs more research. Back to the library with you!
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Great post - the past couple of years of lockdowns, refugees, economic changes, and disrupted education will have had a massive impact. I think I have spent the past couple of years wondering, 'Where do we go from here?' It seems more important than ever to be relevant.