I’ve
been thinking a lot about picture books recently. I’ve been trying to analyse
what works and what doesn’t. I’ve treated myself to some books on the subject
but more about that in a minute.
First of all I want to remind you about The Picture Book Den. It’s hosted by eight successful children’s picture book writers, including Pippa Goodhart, and there’s always something there to inspire. Today Pippa's blog post
is called Pick a Book, Any Book! Do pop over and have a read.
While
I’m on the subject of Pippa Goodhart, her latest picture book has just been
published.
Little
Nelly’s Big Book illustrated by Andy Rowland
It’s
about an elephant who thinks she’s a mouse. Pippa blogged about this book in a previous
Picture Book Den post here where she talks about the importance of pictures in books.
It
may not be obvious to anyone buying copies of the amazingly successful Winnie
the Witch books that these too are written by Pippa Goodhart. The original
character was created by Valerie Thomas but Pippa has been writing them for
several years and very entertaining they are too!
Winnie
Goes For Gold with
illustrations by Korky Paul will be out on March 1st.
If
you can’t wait until March then you can get any of her other Winnie stories
including Winnie Shapes Up and Winnie Takes the Plunge on Pippa's website here and they’re all
illustrated by Korky Paul.
I
recently bought myself a fascinating reference book. It's called Children’s Picturebooks – The art of visual
storytelling. It’s by Martin Salisbury and Morag Styles and it’s packed with
information and inspiration about writing picture books. Right now I’m looking
at its analysis of word and image interplay. Pictures can be used to either
illustrate, to fill in the gaps or as a counterpoint like the well-known Rosie’s
Walk where the fox never gets a mention.
I
knew about these different styles. We’d discussed them when I went on a course
about Writing for Children many years ago but I needed reminding and they’ve
helped me to make some drastic changes to one or two manuscripts that are about
to go out so I’m keeping quite a few things crossed because it’s almost a year
since I had a book accepted for publication.
Maybe some of Pippa’s magic writing dust can float down upon my fingers!!
