Children's Book Design : Week 2; Art Styles and Audiences

First object books; baby/toddler

The very hungry caterpillar is a toddler book written and illustrated by Eric Carle in 1969, and the art style of this book is an illustrated collage. I've chosen this book for the baby toddler age because of its illustration medium and it has been a huge success for decades, selling over 30 million copies. The reason the use of collage for young children is important is the simple, graphic-like shapes with bold colours. This is enough to hold the attention of the toddler, as they don’t need a massive amount of detail to understand the story. The illustrations are more stylised than realistic, but also communicates clearly and includes enough detail to show what each item is. Young children react well to illustrations such as these as they can relate to the playful and non-perfect images, seeming as though the images have been created by children themselves.

Picture book; 3-6

The Gruffalo is illustrated by Axel Scheffler and written by Julia Donaldson. This book contains more narrative than The Very Hungry Caterpillar, but not as much Matilda by Roald Dahl, and because of this it is very suitable for the 3-6 category. The story contains full spread illustrations that support the narrative; this means that children can follow the visuals as their parents read to them, or to support an early reader. The art style in this book is much more complicated with a mixed media approach.

How do you do the illustrations?

“I start with a pencil sketch... often I have to do quite a few before I'm happy with it. I can then trace the sketch on a lightbox onto my watercolour paper (Saunders Waterford 300gr HP), again with pencil. I would then draw the outlines in black ink with a dip-pen. Then I'd colour in everything with Ecoline inks using brushes. After that I use Faber Polychromos and Prismacolour crayons on top of that layer of ink. In the end I might have to redraw some of the black lines and use some white gouache for highlights or snowflakes.” A.Scheffler

With the illustrations being more sophisticated and an increase in detail, the audience has a better understanding and awareness of the characters and setting. This is needed with an older age group as they have an imagination and need an exciting story to keep focused until the end.

Information / reference title, Ages 9-11

Roald Dahl’s Matilda is illustrated by Quentin Blake and first published in 1988. Blake’s art style in these stories are dip-pen and ink with watercolour paint. These seem more basic than the illustrations seen in the Gruffalo, but simultaneously are very beautiful and considered. This is perhaps because the target audience is older again now and don’t need the visuals to be saturated with information, but just as small breathers in the story, and to give the reader a foundation to imagine. I also believe that children of this age group would consider a full page spread, or another medium to be too childish and would be put off from reading that story.