SEUSS Awards: Best Character

Congratulations! Unicorn Thinks He's Pretty Great is the winner of Best Character in the First Annual SEUSS Awards! 

Want to congratulate the author? Tell him how great his book is on Twitter @bobshea

Check back tomorrow morning to see who takes the cake for Best Read Aloud! 

Thanks for all your votes!

The Importance of (Consistently) Being Earnest and Other Thoughts on Characters in Children's Books

Recently, I was asked to respond to some interview questions for the publication Children's Writer. 

Characterization is something that we are constantly concerned with here at the editorial desk. Who is this character? What would they do in this situation? Are they likable? Do I care what his/her/their experience is? Why did they react that way?  There is no real end to the questions we could ask about the characters we meet in our submissions and acquired titles.  

So, for today, I thought I would share my responses to said questions with the world-wide-web. Maybe you have some ideas to share as well? We'd love to hear you sound off below or on Facebook. Maybe you have a quick question? Ask away on Twitter! However you choose to respond, we're excited to hear your feedback.

-Josh

How Characters Are Created - From Idea to Full Illustration

Most children's book editors will tell you that when they read a manuscript for the first time, they are always thinking about the potential illustrations. Which lines will go in the spread? What action will be illustrated? How can the illustrations and the text work together? What will the characters look like? What style of illustrations do we want?

All of these questions, and more, run through our minds when we are working on a new picture book, but the last two are especially important early on. Many people might not realize that characters can go through many phases before they become what ultimately ends up in the book. And that is exactly what happened with one of our new picture books, Monster Needs a Costume by Paul Czajak, which will be the first in a new series called Monster + Me and is being published this fall by Scarletta Kids. It's an adorable rhyming story about a monster who keeps changing his mind about what to dress up as for Halloween. Ultimately he learns that a little creativity and boldness makes for the best costume of the night. Obviously, that fun and creativity needed to come across in the illustrations as well, and over the last month, we have been working with our wonderful illustrator, Wendy Grieb, to come up with the perfect look for Monster and the little boy who takes care of him.

We can't talk enough about how great of an illustrator Wendy is. Right away she had a ton of ideas for Monster, and sent us countless sketches. Here are a few of them:

We always knew from the text that Monster is big. He has an innocence about him, but he's definitely huge and has a significant presence in the room. So the one highlighted above seemed closest to what we were after: burly and big, but friendly. Working off of that description, we got to these (aren't they cute?):

What Makes a Great Picture Book? 10 Key Elements

It's almost the end of November, and man has it flown by. Not only did November mark the beginning of our reading period, but it was Picture Book Month. And between all of the talk online about picture books and the huge amount of proposals we've gotten for new children's titles, we've been thinking a lot this month about what makes a great picture book.
After a little digging around online for popular opinions, and examining our own tastes, we've narrowed it down to a list of 10 key elements:

1. The story must understand what it's like to be a child going through something for the first time. "Picture books communicate self-acceptance, and they model coping strategies for children who are just learning to deal with powerful emotions." (Young Children and Picture Books)
2. A picture book should be simple but thoughtful. There is a small amount of space to find the perfect combination where all the elements work perfectly together.
3. The language should fit the audience. It should be playful, be fun, be attention grabbing, but be rich. Never forced. Every word needs to count for something.
4. Picture books are for the adults reading them as well, and so the story should resonate with and be enjoyable for the child AND the adult reading it. There's nothing better than reading a picture book as an adult and having it still mean something to you.