Bookology Magazine

Tag, You’re It! (Part 2)

How to Get Your Children’s Book Published
Step #2: Know What You’re Writing

Wel­come back to my series for edu­ca­tors on the basics of children’s writ­ing and pub­lish­ing. Last time I wrote about why teach­ers and oth­er edu­ca­tors often make great children’s writ­ers. Today we are going to make sure you know what you’re writ­ing. What? you say. Of course I know what I’m writ­ing, I’m the one writ­ing it! Well, actu­al­ly, maybe not (I didn’t!) — or at least, maybe not in terms of what pub­lish­ers want to turn into a book.

You Can Do This

So, let’s start with the TYPES of children’s books. These are not gen­res of lit­er­a­ture (we will get to that lat­er in this post). These are phys­i­cal types of books. They dif­fer in terms of num­ber of pages, kinds of art, trim size (look it up!), paper type, etc. They are cat­e­go­rized pret­ty much based on the age of the kid (or more specif­i­cal­ly the read­ing lev­els of kids) who will most often ben­e­fit from them. Though there are excep­tions to the descrip­tions below, and hybrids between the types, the basic cat­e­gories are:

Board Book

Peek-a-YouAge range: 0 to 3
Read­er lev­el: pre-read­er
Word count: 0 to 50
Page count: 12 or less
Art: graph­ic illus­tra­tion or real­is­tic pho­tos
Paper: thick card­board, lam­i­nat­ed, round­ed cor­ners
Trim size: small, < 5” x 7”

Pur­pose: Read aloud by care­givers to babies or tod­dlers. Often cre­at­ed by a sin­gle writer/illustrator. Board books fea­ture basic con­cepts (colors/numbers) or baby-relat­ed sto­ries, are easy to clean, non-tox­ic, and (seri­ous­ly) chewable.

Picture Book

Age range: 4 to 8
Read­er lev­el: emerg­ing through ele­men­tary
Word count: 500 to 1000
Page count: 32
Art: heav­i­ly illus­trat­ed on every page in infi­nite styles
Paper: thin but high qual­i­ty; often coat­ed to high­light illus­tra­tions
Trim size: 9” x 11”

Pur­pose: Pic­ture books are typ­i­cal­ly read aloud by par­ents or teach­ers. They fea­ture con­cepts and sto­ries from super basic to quite com­plex, includ­ing those that have addi­tion­al mean­ing for adult read­ers. The vocab­u­lary may be high­er than the age range, due to art and oth­er visu­al aspects (ex: type design) that sup­port under­stand­ing. Great pic­ture books are art depen­dent — the art is dri­ving the sto­ry equal to, more than, or some­times in place of, words.

Big
Fic­tion
Jumper
Non­fic­tion
Early Reader

Age range: 5 to 9
Read­er lev­el: 3rd grade and under
Word count: 1000 to 2500 words
Page count: 32 to 64
Art: varies from comics to illus. to pho­tos, from full page to spot [small] art
Paper: thin, coat­ed for class­room dura­bil­i­ty
Trim size: 6” x 9”

Pur­pose: Ear­ly read­ers are for begin­ning read­ers to prac­tice or to teach read­ing skills. They are cre­at­ed from strict word lists and struc­tures that con­form to Lex­ile scores. Pub­lish­ers con­trol what is devel­oped for this mar­ket, not cre­ators. Most pub­lish­ers have estab­lished lines of ear­ly read­ers already in place, typ­i­cal­ly hir­ing expe­ri­enced authors or re-work­ing ‘hits’ to cre­ate new books. By far the most dif­fi­cult mar­ket to break into.

 

Chapter Book

Ivy + Bean

Age range: 7 to 10
Read­er lev­el: Ear­ly Ele­men­tary < 4th grade
Word count: 4,000 to 12,000 words
Page count: < 100
Art: lots of spot art
Paper: thin and uncoat­ed, often paper­back
Trim size: 5.5” x 8”

Pur­pose: A chap­ter book is for first-time, ful­ly inde­pen­dent read­ing. It is divid­ed into very short chap­ters so that kids can stop as time, activ­i­ties, and atten­tion allow. Chap­ter books are often series sto­ries deal­ing with ele­men­tary kids’ interests.

Middle Grade Novel

The Labors of Hercules Beal

Age range: 9 to 13
Read­er lev­el: 4th to 8th grade
Word count: 20,000 to 50,000 words
Page count: 70 to 150 pages
Art: min­i­mal spot art
Paper: thin and uncoat­ed
Trim size: 5.5” x 8”

Pur­pose: For con­fi­dent read­ers to explore a wide vari­ety of issues and themes usu­al­ly cen­tered on friend­ships, fam­i­ly, or school. These books have chap­ters, but they are not “chap­ter books” (I know, con­fus­ing!) The char­ac­ters are often the same age range as the read­ers. Mid­dle grade nov­els can be wild­ly fun­ny, or quite seri­ous, address­ing top­ics like bul­ly­ing, addic­tion, men­tal or phys­i­cal ill­ness or death, yet don’t usu­al­ly con­tain graph­ic sex­u­al con­tent or illic­it language.

Graphic Novel

Family Style

Age range: 7 to 18+
Read­er lev­el: inde­pen­dent, 3rd grade to adult
Word count: not applic­a­ble / art depen­dent
Page count: 48 to 200+
Art: com­ic strip
Paper: varies
Size: 5.5” x 8”

Pur­pose: The graph­ic nov­el is a nar­ra­tive com­ic strip con­sist­ing of pan­eled black and white or col­or illus­tra­tions typ­i­cal­ly includ­ing short text in bub­bles, sound effects (CRASH!) and oth­er “com­ic book style” fea­tures. They are most often cre­at­ed by a sin­gle artist/writer. Graph­ic nov­els are one of the most var­ied types in terms of read­er age and sto­ry themes, rang­ing from fun­ny ele­men­tary school adven­ture sto­ries to mid­dle school romances to mem­oirs for young adults about racism and war. Dif­fi­cult cat­e­go­ry for any begin­ning writer with­out pro­fes­sion­al illus­tra­tion skills.

Young Adult Novel

Such Charming Liars

Age range: 12 to 18
Read­er lev­el: adult
Word count: 60,000 to 90,000
Page count: 200 or more
Art: none, cov­er only
Paper: thin, uncoat­ed
Trim size: 6” x 9”

Pur­pose: For read­ers in high school and up. The YA nov­el typ­i­cal­ly has char­ac­ters of late teen ages, but deals with sim­i­lar themes found in adult fic­tion. The YA nov­el typ­i­cal­ly address­es tran­si­tions to adult­hood, includ­ing friend­ships, romance, sex­u­al­i­ty, or any chal­lenges that a high school read­er may find relat­able. May use graph­ic con­tent and illic­it language.

Long Form Nonfiction, Middle Grade or Young Adult

Age range: 10 and up
Read­er lev­el: inde­pen­dent
Word count: 20,000 and up
Page count: 50 and up
Art: any
Paper: any
Trim size: any

As you can see from the above descrip­tion, longer form non­fic­tion can take almost any form and its con­tent deter­mines its audi­ence. It is cat­e­go­rized only by the fact that the infor­ma­tion or sto­ry impart­ed is 100% true. I have exam­ples on my shelves that have no real illus­tra­tion except cov­er art and look like nar­ra­tive nov­els and oth­ers that are heav­i­ly illus­trat­ed on every page, are expos­i­to­ry in nature, and are as large as the largest  cof­fee table books.

The Enigma Girls
Indigenous Identity

Again, I am not say­ing there are not excep­tions to the above descrip­tions, but these are the cat­e­gories that pub­lish­ers will slot your work­ing man­u­script into when con­sid­er­ing buy­ing it. So, do you know what you’re writ­ing? Is it a pic­ture book? Not if it’s 5,000 words. Is it an ear­ly read­er? Not if you’re a first-time author. Is it a mid­dle grade nov­el? Not if it’s a hot and heavy romance and your 17-year-old main char­ac­ter can’t stop cursing.

Let’s briefly talk about genre. There are two basic gen­res: Fic­tion and Non­fic­tion. Fic­tion means the whole man­u­script or any part of it is made up. Non­fic­tion means the man­u­script is (100%) prove-ably true. There can be non­fic­tion IN fic­tion; but there shouldn’t be fic­tion IN nonfiction.

And then, there are about a bil­lion more gen­res with­in each of those two broad­est cat­e­gories. Okay, no, I exag­ger­ate — there aren’t a bil­lion; but depend­ing on how gen­res are defined and hybridized there are a TON! The basic ones typ­i­cal­ly used in children’s lit­er­a­ture include:

  • fan­ta­sy
  • sci­ence fiction
  • real­is­tic fiction
  • his­tor­i­cal fiction
  • biog­ra­phy
  • poet­ry
  • folk­lore

(and so many more sub­cat­e­gories: infor­ma­tion­al fic­tion, fairy tale fan­ta­sy, mag­i­cal real­ism, and on and on). All this ‘genre-talk’ can get quite com­pli­cat­ed, but if you search, “gen­res in children’s lit­er­a­ture,” the inter­net con­tains hun­dreds of in-depth expla­na­tions and descrip­tions for each genre. Here’s a sim­ple prose expla­na­tion or a graph­ic sum­ma­ry if you’re more visual.

Briefly, it’s time to lay­er genre onto those book types. In oth­er words, all book types can be fic­tion or non­fic­tion AND all book types can be any genre. Some pair­ings are more com­mon than oth­ers, but essen­tial­ly, there can be board book biogra­phies or graph­ic nov­el biogra­phies, pic­ture book fan­ta­sy or young adult fan­ta­sy, mid­dle grade his­tor­i­cal fic­tion or chap­ter book his­tor­i­cal fic­tion. Although at first this seems con­fus­ing, it also gives cre­ators a rich tapes­try of ages of chil­dren and inter­ests from which to write.  My strong advice: write your sto­ry with a par­tic­u­lar age group/book type in mind first, and oth­er than know­ing whether it’s fic­tion or non­fic­tion, cat­e­go­rize its genre lat­er (if ever.) Let the pub­lish­er and the Library of Con­gress cat­e­go­rize your sto­ry, you just write and revise it enough to get an editor’s attention.

Here are two wide-rang­ing books about children’s books and pub­lish­ing that cov­er book types & genre:

  • Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market 33rd editionChildren’s Writ­ers and Illustrator’s Mar­ket, 33rd edi­tion, Amy Jones, edi­tor, Writer’s Digest Books, 2022. It’s dif­fi­cult for a print book to keep up with every pub­lish­ing trend, but this most­ly updat­ed pub­li­ca­tion is a good way to get an over­all view of the mar­ket, includ­ing book types, pub­lish­ers, agents, etc. There may be a new edi­tion com­ing soon, read the most recent one you can get your hands on.

  • SCBWI Essen­tial Guide to Pub­lish­ing for Chil­dren 2024. This pub­li­ca­tion is avail­able online only to those who join the Soci­ety of Children’s Book Writ­ers and Illus­tra­tors (SCBWI). In 2024, ini­tial annu­al dues are $95 (stu­dent rate is less). If you want to write for chil­dren, SCBWI has many oppor­tu­ni­ties and resources for its members. 

Next time I will talk about poten­tial ways to pub­lish your man­u­script and the vari­ety of pub­lish­ers. Maybe I’m putting the cart ahead of the horse, but in the end (I hope!) there will be a method to my mad­ness. I believe it’s impor­tant for you to under­stand all the play­ers that make up the big pic­ture of children’s pub­lish­ing before we talk about the steps to get to your goal.

Until the next issue of Bookol­o­gy, keep writing! 

More from this series …

Before, Step #1, Believe

Next, Step #3, The Pub­lish­ers

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Jen Bryant
Jen Bryant
6 months ago

What a thor­ough, elo­quent and acces­si­ble arti­cle by one of the very best in the business!

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