Who are you writing for?

 

The audience for children’s books is complicated and I think it’s worth considering.

 

Yourself
When you write it’s important to please yourself first, to strive to create a story that satisfies all your wishes about stories. You will probably never be completely satisfied with your own story because that’s the way creativity goes, but the joy is that once you have got as near as you can, you get to start again, to get nearer.

 

Children
Of course, children. You need to tailor your book to your child audience. That means, on the whole, that your use of language is going to be more straightforward than it might be for an adult book. It means your story structure is likely to be simpler. It means that you cannot assume your reader has knowledge of things that are known to you as an adult. It’s vital to engage children quickly in your story – they have other things that demand their attention more insistently than books, and there are lots of other books to read that will satisfy their urge for funny or spooky or exciting or emotional right away. And, for me, ending with hope is non-negotiable in a children’s book. That doesn’t necessarily mean ‘happy ever after’, but there must be an element of positive closure. Oh, and closure itself is important: it’s cheating your child reader to end a book end without closing the central story so that they are obliged to seek out the next in the series (which may be a year away if this is a newly published book). Children are growing up – they want the whole story right now. Next year may be too late.

 

Audience vs purchaser

This is where the difference between children’s books and adult books lies. Children sometimes buy books for themselves. They sometimes select books to read from a library. But there’s a whole set of people who do most of the buying on their behalf or who advocate on behalf of books to children.

 

Parents, carers and gift-buyers
Parents and carers don’t necessarily know anything about the children’s books that are available. (Of course some do, but I’m thinking about the majority of parents and carers who, even if they are readers themselves, aren’t necessarily interested in children’s books.) They know about the books they enjoyed as a child. They recognise big name authors and celebrities. If a lot of children are reading a particular author or book, they may become aware of it. If a child is a reader or if they need or want a book by a particular author or for a particular reason, the parent or carer might consult a bookseller or librarian. Otherwise, they’re probably going to go for something they recognise or pick up something that looks appealing from the bookshop display tables. How do you, as a children’s book creator, grab these people’s attention? I don’t know.

 

Teachers
Primary school teachers want children to read books and they want books that children will listen to and understand and find engaging. Some teachers are hungry for knowledge about new children’s books that will engage readers and listeners. They want to know about all sorts of books to fit all sorts of readers. For class reading books, they may like books with issues they can discuss or a relevance to the local area or full of beautiful language or ideas or extraordinary flights of imagination. They may want funny or thrilling stories to capture the children who are not yet sold on the idea of the book as entertainment. They like books that come with free resources that are useful in their classrooms.

In an ideal world, where primary teachers would have time to engage with the world of children’s books and with the reading needs of individual children, and would have access to funds to buy all the books they want and need, teachers would be the key to your child audience. But we have to face facts. Primary school teachers have enormous burdens on their time and mental energy. Books are just a small part of all the things they need to learn about themselves and engage children with. Budgets for school libraries are puny and irregular. A lot of school libraries only get new books when parents donate books their children have grown out of.

 

Librarians
Ah, librarians! These are the glorious champions of children’s books. It’s their job. A children’s librarian is on the lookout for books that will engage and excite children. They want all sorts of books in their library to suit all sorts of readers. They’re not just looking at the books that shout at them because of celebrity authors and zeitgeist; they’re looking at everything the publishing world produces. They have knowledge to share and they’re prepared to share it. But how many schools actually have a dedicated librarian? How many public libraries have a children’s librarian?

 

Book reviewers and bloggers
The space given to children’s book reviews in newspapers is hugely disproportionate to their position in the market. The reason for this, I presume, is that children are unlikely to be reading the newspaper. But that’s nonsense, of course, because on the whole children aren’t the ones buying books. *sigh* There are other places, children’s book magazines and review blogs. The writers of these are part of the audience for children’s books, but of course, they’re not who you’re writing for. But they are important, nonetheless. Engaged parents and teachers and librarians will use this source of information about children’s books. So even if you’re not writing for them, you need to be thinking about them when you start marketing your book.

 

Agents and Publishers

Are you writing for agents and publishers? Unless you're planning to self-publish, then you certainly ought to be thinking about them. It's the job of agents and publishers to think about the market for your book. Personally, I suggest leaving this bit to them. Don't write for them. Think about the book you want to write and write it, then do your best to put it in the hands of an agent or publisher who is likely to want it. You can find out what they're looking for on their websites, or sometimes on Twitter or blogs. Or look at other things they publish and decide if your book fits their list. 

 

What does all this mean? It means that you may be thinking about how your book will satisfy yourself and your child audience, but agents and publishers will consider your book in the light of the purchasers and champions who will get your book into the hands of children. Write what you want to write, but bear this in mind when it comes time to send your book out into the world.

 

---

 

My latest book, Snippets, is out now.

---

 You can support me and my work by buying me a coffee on Ko-fi.

Nonfiction for children – where to start

It’s been a while since I started writing a new nonfiction book for children. I’m about to start on a new one and, to be honest, I’m feeling a little rusty. So I thought I’d talk myself through the planning process in a general way and perhaps that would be useful to other people as well as to myself.

 

So, where do you start? Let’s assume you have a topic already. Either it’s something you feel there’s a need for a book on or something you’re passionate about and want to share or maybe a publisher has commissioned you to write a book on a particular topic. That last one is the way most of the nonfiction books I’ve written have come about, though this new book I’m embarking on is all my own idea.

 

So you’ve got your idea and now you need to ask yourself a series of questions. A lot of these reflect the way primary school teachers begin project work, gathering children together to find out what they know and what they want to find out.

 

What are children likely to know already?

Obviously, you’re guessing here, but looking around at TV and films and books and computer games should give you some idea what sort of basic knowledge children are likely to have. If you were going to write a book about Vikings, for example, you might assume that children may have come across the Vikings in Cressida Cowell’s books or the films of them, and so know that the Vikings lived somewhere cold and had cool ships. Of course you also have to be aware that children may ‘know’ things that aren’t true (like that Vikings had dragons).

 

In a way, this question is a bit misleading. It’s not exactly about what children know, it’s simply about the fact that they know something. You need to come to the subject as though children know nothing because of course there will be gaps in their knowledge and you can’t possibly know what they are. Perhaps it is better to ask a different question:

 

Why have they picked up this book?

What is it about the topic of the book that has made them reach for it? Will it tell them more about something they know a little bit about? Will it give them exciting things to do or make? Will it clarify a topic that can be worrying? Does it promise to reveal great secrets or thrilling facts?

 

The point is that at the outset you need to put yourself in the child’s position. Why would they pick up this book? What are they going to get out of the experience of reading it?

 

So once you’ve got that sorted out, there are some further questions to answer:

 

What are the key facts about the topic you must include in the book?

 

What is the most exciting information you must include?

 

What information would make great illustrations?

 

And of course, all the time you’re gathering and sorting information, reading serious grown-up books on the topic, looking at how other children’s writers have approached it, searching the internet and second-hand bookshops and museums for quirky nuggets of information. And once you’ve gathered all you need, then it’s time to sort it.

 

Not an easy process. With a narrative nonfiction book it’s a little easier; then you’re telling the story of something, propelled forward by the passage of time. But with an information book it’s rather harder. You need to think of it as a story anyway in that one thing should lead to next. Starting with the basics – what, when, where – generally works. Or referring to the child’s experience of whatever it is and then building out. The book will naturally go off in different directions from whatever the starting point is, but I think it’s important to bring it all back together again at the end. With a history book you can do this by talking about what is left behind, the archaeology or influence on life today. Sometimes it’s possible to look to the future of your topic – though that can date the book quickly. Or finish by bringing it back to the child reader with things they can do now they’re in possession of all this knowledge. It’s tricky, this finishing off business, but important to make a satisfying reading experience.

 

So that’s it. Best get on with it, eh?

When does tea become high tea?

 

Some books reach you at just the right moment. They talk of things you know and love or spark ideas of things you’ll come to know and love. They contain characters and stories that are at once new and fresh and at the same time resound in your mind with a rightness that seems like familiarity. It is almost as though these books were written with you personally in mind. Henrietta’s House by Elizabeth Gouge was a book like this for me. I read it first when I was twelve or thirteen, that time when I was still gulping in all the fabulous richness of children’s books while also tipping a toe into the adult section of the library. Elizabeth Gouge was an author of a generation earlier, my mother had read her as a child, but you could find her books in libraries and second-hand shops and if you hunted there were some modern editions around. There’s a Christian focus in these books but not in the way of Victorian books. It’s woven around with myth so that it seems exotic and fascinating rather than dourly moralistic (though to be fair, there is a fair bit of lesson-learning).

 

There are only two children in Henrietta’s House and a lot of grown-ups, all with rather grow-up concerns. The two children, Henrietta and Hugh Anthony, don’t much like children, other than each other. It’s the story of Henrietta’s birthday picnic in the hills around the cathedral city of Torminster, of underground caverns and giants with their heart in paper bags, of early motor cars and dreams come true. I love the way Elizabeth Gouge threads fairy tale through the everyday, the contrast between the down-to-earth Hugh Anthony and story-loving Henrietta. But most of all I loved the house in the woods that Henrietta’s father secretly put together after long ‘what if’ discussions with her, complete with the library of the twenty books Henrietta thought every ten-year-old girl should own. Oh, and the part at the end when Henrietta is waiting at the house for everyone to turn up and they first lay out a tea party with the things they find in the kitchen and then gradually add things to turn it first into high tea and then into supper as time goes on. Oh the joy – I might have to go and read it again right now!

Thirteen ways to end a chapter

While it can be tempting to keep on writing with occasional line gaps for changes of scene and time as Terry Pratchett did in his Discworld novels, it’s not really fair to child readers (or adult readers-aloud) not to have regular chapter endings. (In fact even Terry Pratchett's children’s books are divided into chapters!) One of my 'big picture' tasks when editing a first draft is to look at how the endings of each individual chapter are working and see how the chapter endings vary as the story progresses.

The most basic rule of ending a chapter is that it must encourage the reader to carry on reading. The obvious way to do this, of course is with a cliffhanger. But ending every chapter on a cliffhanger is exhausting and monotonous. The trick is to vary between ending the chapter with:

a feeling of disorder This is could be a huge cliffhanger or just enough to signal a coming dilemma or threat.

a feeling of order This will give the reader a feeling of closure, the idea that the plot has forward momentum and things are on their way to being sorted out.

There are all sorts of ways to break that down further, but here is my own list of thirteen ways to end a chapter. Some types of ending are conducive to a feeling of disorder, some to order and some work equally well either way.

1. Obstacle: a barrier to change or forward movement is presented (disorder)

2. Question: a question is posed by a character or the narrator (disorder)

3. Choice: a choice is presented or a decision must be made (disorder)

4. Mistake: a character (or the reader) realises that a mistake has been made (disorder)

5. Disappointment: a plan goes wrong (disorder)

6. Arrival: a visitor or message or movement to a new place brings either disappointment or hope (disorder /order)

7. Departure: someone leaving or movement away from a place brings either disappointment or hope (disorder /order)

8. Revelation: a character or reader learns or understands something (disorder /order)

9. Confession: one character reveals something that will bond or separate characters (disorder /order)

10. Door: an opportunity for change or forward movement is presented  (order)

11. Plan: a plan is formed (order)

12. Hope: things appear to be going in the direction the characters desire (order )

13. Reflection: a quiet moment usually following action sequence; possibly a statement by the character or narrator about the story’s theme (order )

Miniature World Building

When we talk about world-building in fiction, it sounds like something huge. We think Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones with their great historical backstories, myriad characters and entire languages. Or we think of the intricacies of science fiction – creating believable alternate realities or different scientific laws. Then there are books like Watership Down, where Richard Adams spins a mythology and history around real rabbit behaviour. Where books that take the reader into other worlds work, they’re deep and involving, they never for a moment give you cause to stop and question their plausibility.

But world-building works on a small scale too.

One of my favourite childhood books was Five Dolls in a House by Helen Clare. I can’t tell you where it came from or who gave it to me. It seems like a book I always had.

My well-read copy of Five Dolls in a House by Helen Clare, illustrated by Cecil Leslie

You can tell right from the start that some serious world building is going on here. Many – perhaps most – books that take their world-building seriously will provide readers with a map. There’s no map in Five Dolls in a House. Instead, there’s a section of the house. Oh yes! It’s like a signpost to say, ‘Here’s the world you’re in right now. Focus on this.’ And how many times I flicked back through the pages to work out who was where at various points of the story, how often I simply examined the picture and wished I owned this house myself.

Section of dolls' house from Five Dolls in a House by Helen Clare, illustrated by Cecil Leslie

The premise of the story is that Elizabeth wonders what the dolls in her dolls’ house do when she’s finished playing with them and closed the front of the house. She peeks in the window but of course the dolls are just lying where she left them. Then all at once Elizabeth finds herself walking up to the front door of the house. This strange magic isn’t referred to at all; Elizabeth just accepts it without question and I, as a reader, went along with her. When Elizabeth meets the dolls she tries to explain who she is, and the dolls take her explanation that she owns the house and the fact that she already knows all their names to mean that she is their landlady.

Every detail of the dolls’ world is considered. They moan about how dreadful it is to live in a house where the whole of the front comes off sometimes. They have to pretend to have dinner because all the food in the house is made of plaster (Elizabeth remedies this with a chocolate biscuit and jellies). Some pet mice take up residence in the house and the dolls use them as horses to pull a little carriage (with disastrous results!).

It’s a joy! The characters are gorgeous – Vanessa, the eldest who is a terrible snob, Jane, the beauty, Amanda, clever and naughty, Jacqueline, the French paying guest, Lupin, who always goes about in her vest much to Vanessa’s disapproval, and the monkey who lives on the roof and is always making cheeky comments and causing mischief.

So much is packed into this short book. As with many chapter books for younger readers, each chapter is a complete story but the whole has a narrative that reaches a satisfying conclusion. Long after I was grown up, I did discover that there were sequels to the story, but I can’t bear to read them. For me Five Dolls in a House is a completely perfect miniature world and I don’t want to know any more.

This post is part of a collection of seven about children's books that I love. You can see the original post here, with links to all the books I've written about.

Frances - the most real small child I've ever read

I remember almost no picture books from my childhood. I suppose this may be because they would have been library books for the most part. At home, I had a handful of Beatrix Potters which I valued more for their satisfying size than for their stories.

The one story I could remember as an adult was Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban. Why this particular book stuck with me more than all the others I must have had read to me I have no idea. Of course, it is a very fine book, so perhaps my pre-reading self had some literary discrimination. All I know is that this was a book that if I saw it on the library shelves, I would immediately add it to my pile. That copy must have spent more time in our house than it did at the library.

This was the book that I sought out when I had my children. I bought Bread and Jam when my eldest daughter was two and eventually we had most of the Frances books, though the only other one that was familiar to me was A Baby Sister for Frances. We also had a rather delightful tape of Glynis Johns reading the stories. Oh I wish I had that tape still. She was odd and real and just perfect.

Why did Frances appeal so much? What was it about these stories that caught me? Frances, though she is, of course, a badger, is very much an ordinary child. Nothing much happens. In Bread and Jam Frances is fussy about her food so Mother gives her bread and jam for every meal until Frances realises that that’s dull and there are other foods she likes. Put so plainly is sounds almost Victorian – Frances acts up and learns a lesson. But it’s not like that at all. All the characters bounce off the page with life. We know exactly how Frances feels – and she feels so much and so strongly – and we understand it. She is one of the most real small children I’ve ever read. And you can’t help but love her rhymes:

The language of these books has seeped into our family vocabulary. We know what we’re referring to when we talk about things ‘coming out even’. When ever opportunity arises, I will say ‘You can be sure there will always be plenty of chocolate cake around here.’

It’s the detail I love. When Frances watches her friend Albert eat his extensive packed lunch, we get every detail of his ritual as he cracks his hard-boiled egg, peels it, salts it, bites it, then moves on to take a bite of his sandwich and his pickle and a drink of milk. You can feel Frances's envy at every bite. And at the end, her own joy in doing the same with her new non-bread-and-jam lunch, made even more special by the inclusion of a doily and a tiny vase of violets. 

This is very wordy compare to most modern picture books, and I know there are versions out there where the text has been cut, but I believe every word of this is necessary and every word is a great pleasure. For someone who loves children’s books so, I found reading to my kids something of a chore and in particular I disliked wordy picture books. Maybe I could feel the children getting restive and wanting to see the picture on the next page. I never found that with Frances though. I would willingly start again the moment I’d reached the end. Pure quality? Or because it was so embedded in my memory that the book felt like all the very best things about books and childhood and reading aloud.

Telling stories the Naughty Little Sister way

I am certain that I was already familiar with Dorothy Edwards’ My Naughty Little Sister stories when I came across them as an adult, but I have no concrete memory of them from my childhood. I suppose my mother read them to me. Perhaps she knew them from the radio, not when she was a child as they were first broadcast on the BBC’s Listen with Mother in 1950, but possibly from her younger brother’s childhood. Thinking about it, maybe they were also read on the BFBS (British Forces Broadcasting Service) radio programmes I listened to as a child. These seem to have been modelled on the BBC’s early radio programmes for children like Children’s Hour and Listen with Mother.

I wonder if the Naughty Little Sister stories seemed like something from another age to my mother or if that world was still close enough to hers. In so many ways, they seem like a historical document - the clothes and the milkman’s horse and the extraordinariness of the day when the father is left to childmind. But none of this stopped me reading them to my children. The stories are too alive to seem old-fahsioned.

The narrative voice is one I’m pretty sure you couldn’t get away with today. It’s the voice of an adult talking directly to the child listener about her own childhood and her little sister – unnamed – who was always doing silly things. The adult narrator addresses the listening child with comments to make them see how silly and funny her naughty little sister was – ‘wasn’t she silly?” “wasn’t that naughty?” The narrator also references the listener’s own behaviour – “You would never do anything as silly as that” – to make the listener feel cleverer or to be gently instructive, or maybe just to reinforce how funny it was. Even though the narrator’s focus is absolutely on the little sister, there are occasional comments that reveal the narrator herself as a big sister – she is occasionally embarrassed, sometimes affectionate but mostly superior. You can tell that the adult narrator, looking back at herself sees that she was a harsh judge of her younger sister. I know it’s very old-fashioned for a book to talk down to children in this way, but I have huge affection for this narrator. I think these stories perfectly mimic the way adults tell children stories about things that have happened and people they know . It’s certainly pretty near the way I told stories to my own young children, although it’s possible that I was unconsciously aping My Naughty Little Sister.

Although the stories come from a time far away from ours, they still work because the narrow world of small children has changed relatively little. The stories are all about the little things that happen in children’s lives – losing teeth, playing islands on a newly washed floor, posting bread crusts into a drawer, getting bored when you’re told to sit still and be good, making a mess of your smart clothes.

Cherry on the cake are the gorgeous illustrations by the wonderful Shirley Hughes whose naughty little sister is right out of the world of her own Alfie stories. Plus from my point of view the stories are the perfect length for reading aloud – that probably betrays their origin on radio.