Читать книгу Writing Children's Books For Dummies - Peter Economy - Страница 25

Terrific topics for board books include early learning concepts, such as shapes and colors, and daily experiences, such as mealtime and naptime. But you don’t need a lot of words to get your concepts across. Board books employ simple rhyming and repeated text and a lot of bright, colorful, engaging pictures to attract baby’s attention.

To write a good board book, you need to have relatable content. To figure out whether you do, you need to research the titles already out there. Take a good look at the board books that continue to sell, and sell, and sell, such as the ones we mention in the section “Baby-friendly board books,” earlier in this chapter. The best board books have a few elements in common:

 Simple concepts or story lines appropriate for babies and toddlers.

 Minimal text per page (often only a word or two).

 Illustratable text (meaning you don’t include any overly complex concepts). The illustrations or photographs should be clear and evocative; if the words disappeared, the images could tell the story by themselves.

Illustrators are also the writers of many board books. Often, editors at the publishing house write the actual text, based on the art the illustrator produces. The text usually takes a backseat to the pictures, which do most of the storytelling. If you want to know some board book author/illustrators to emulate, check out Sandra Boynton and Rosemary Wells.

However, because the board-book market is totally inundated with concept books and simple stories about everyday experiences, if you want to sell a board book based on text only, you have to make the text very unique indeed. To make sure your board book stands out, study what’s already out there so that you can create an original concept and story.