10 The Society of Children’ s Books & Illustration Lovers – Newsletter # 1 – August 2013
lightning and a lightning bug. Nowhere is this more true than in a picture book.
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Both text and pictures have to appeal to the reader as well as( or more than) to the pre-schooler. This applies especially to books for babies where the adult is doing all the choosing. With older preschoolers who have a mind of their own, the subject-something they can relate to- Dogs! Trucks! Cats! Planes! Dinosaurs! Kids!-- becomes more important, as does a small plot. But always the colorful pictures and the rhythmic, rollicking, rolling or lulling words are what keep youngsters looking and listening and saying:“ Read it again!“-- as well as keeping the adult reader from going berserk!
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For me a good picture book is one that works on different levels for both the adult and the child. One that can be read over and over and new things can be heard and seen. I also think reading a picture book is a performance. Good picture books often include sounds and phrases that emphasize this performance aspect.
I think that the best books for this audience are the ones that tap directly into a young child ' s experience, allowing him or her to enter the world the author and illustrator have created, no matter how unusual or fantastical, and to feel at home there. The storytelling should be straightforward and spare and the art needs to be uncluttered and clearly delineated. Repetition and rhymes sharpen the ears and often invite verbal responses. And who can resist opening a closed flap?
� Limits. Good selection. Elimination. Young, in the question posed, I’ d take out.
� A lot of what you put in, you should take out. Rewrite it until it’ s really simple and terse, and if you can communicate an idea with a picture, eliminate the text.
� Limit the span of subject at hand, a lot of things often times are better imagined than imaged.
� Limited words, it’ s a picture book.
� Limited palette, clean and bright and simple. Keep it open at the end; it’ s nice to want to want it read, again, and again.
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