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- Varieties of nonfiction picture book projects
- Wordless non-fiction: "Anno's U.S.A."
- Description of people and places: "Anno's U.S.A."
- 'Extreme' learning: "Incredible comparisons", "Catastrophe!: great engineering failure--and success"
- Visual compendium: "The art of the Renaissance"
- Daily life in other times/places: "The art of the Renaissance"
- Games with an instructional angle: "Mind-boggling machines and amazing mazes"
- Instructional material with gaming appeal: "The ultimate Noah's ark"
- 'Factoid encyclopedias': "Incredible comparisons"
- Interactive books: "Exploring energy"
- Activity books:
- The 'Reading Rainbow' editions of familiar stories, such as "Imogene's antlers", enhanced with activity plans tied to a PBS TV program.
- "How to make super pop-ups"
- Fictional characters presenting actual topics in history ("Why are you calling me a barbarian?"), technology ("Everyday things and how they work"), or geography ("Paddle-to-the-Sea").
- How a place changes over time: "Cathedral: the story of its construction", "Pyramid", "San Rafael: a Central American city through the ages"
- "Building the book Cathedral", issued on the 25th anniversary of "Cathedral", details the problem-solving and creative process that went into the making of this award-winning non-fiction picture book.
- Researching visual resources
- Using computer databases
- "Finding images online: Online User's guide to image searching in cyberspace"
- The majority of image repositories still rely on text keywords, entered manually. This is a labor intensive, error-prone process, which is ultimately conditioned by the judgement of the individuals who catalog the images. For an alternative approach, which relies on the inherent visual content of the pictures, see the Query By Image Content system at wwwqbic.almaden.ibm.com
- Using old-style visual resources collections
- "Picture research: a practical guide"
- In spite of what you may have heard, not everything has been digitized yet. A lot may never be digitized at all.
- Communicating with content experts
- Getting help from the writer in translating the specialized language used to describe the topic into visual concepts.
- After translating what you learned into images, return to the content expert for verification. Make sure that your presentation does not distort the ideas presented.
- Textbook guidelines
- State-level bodies guide the development of textbooks. An example is the California State Board of Education at http://goldmine.cde.ca.gov/board/, where you can find documentation on the core academic content standards for K-12 public schools.
- The California board officially has jurisdiction over its own state only. Its decisions, however--along with those of a few other populous states like Texas--shape the products of all the major publishers. Only limited customization is done to accommodate the requirements of smaller states.
- Board guidelines, officially or informally, will affect the illustrator's work. For instance, they may lead to highlight with illustrations some historical events rather than others. Or they may prompt for greater diversity among the people depicted.
- What makes a reference image useful
- Shulevitz: chapter 11, "Visual References"
- Explanatory nonfiction visuals
- Find matches between the visual concepts and the child's experience
- If at all possible, use actions rather than abstract symbols. The child may not yet be familiar with symbols adults take for granted.
- Find a way to draw the reader in
- Unexpected/striking visual juxtapositions
- Show the scene from an unusual angle, particularly the way a small child would see it.
- Don't be afraid to add "irrelevant" details. Think of them as additional "entry points" into the subject matter--one of them just may connect with a reader who would otherwise lack interest in the main topic.
- Don't neglect to consult with your 'built-in audience': what would make complicated thoughts appealing and clear to the child you once were?
- Unusual picture books: novelties
- various formats
- pop-ups
- "Leonardo Da Vinci : a three-dimensional study" uses a pop-up to explain effectively the complex shape of a stellated solid.
- "Ben's box : a pop-up fantasy" uses intricate coil pop-ups to represent the path taken by Ben, the child protagonist, in his imaginary adventures.
- "Popposites" uses an accordion fold-out to create a striking contrast between pictures of 'few' and 'many'.
- pull-the-tab
- "Baby clown" uses pull-the-tab mechanism to create the sound of a saw.
- "Deep down underground: pop-up book of amazing facts and feats" exposes the 'machinery' behind its pull-the-tab effects. It does double duty as a non-fiction book for children, and as a demo of paper engineering for all ages.
- lift-the-flap
- In "Popposites", lifting a flap changes a face from 'sad' to 'happy'.
- turning circles
- In "Evolution of the world", spinning a tab creates cinematic dissolves between landscapes of different eras.
- tactiles ("feelies")
- scratch-and-sniff
- peepholes
- "The Snoops" literalizes the notion of a peephole book by letting the reader spy on a hilarious family of pepping toms. These days, you can think of it as a spoof of 'reality programming'.
- optical effects and illusions
- "The nine tasks of Mistry" uses various ambiguos perspectives and other illusions to create a game within the story. The reder solves the riddles along with the main character.
- "Henry's gift" works into its medieval fantasy narrative several 3D images (using the 'magic eye' technique) to suggest the visions experienced by its lead character.
- flipbooks
- The illustrator of "Lucy goes to the country", a well-known animator, has added an animation of the cat protagonist in the margins of this picture book.
- coloring books
- "D'Nealian handwriting ABC book"
- and more...
- board toys
- shape books
- stickers
- paper engineering
- "Elements of pop-up: a pop-up book for aspiring paper engineers": a pop-up book that can be disassembled to learn its operating secrets.
- "How to make super pop-ups" is primarily an activity book for children, but it present step-by-step instructions for a wide repertoire of paper mechanisms.
- "Paper pop-ups" is much more limited in the number and variety of examples it presents. But it can be useful as a quick introduction to this art because it provides a set of full-size color patterns for each project, ready to cut and assemble.
- Book publishing alternatives
- For a basic overview and checklist on the process of publishing your own book, see "Simple guide to self-publishing"
- Self-publishing on paper
- The old fashioned way: subsidy (or 'vanity') presses.
- The new way: print-on-demand using short-run digital presses (as mentioned in our previous meeting)
- E-books--self-publishing bits and bytes
- E-books are classified separately from electronic media (see below), because they are seen primarily as a different way to distribute the content of a p-book (a newly-minted term for the old-fashioned printed-on-paper stuff) without adding unique features.
- At the moment (early 2001), the few publishers who have experimented with e-book versions of some of their childrens' titles generally report sales 'in the handfuls'
- The technology may be immature for visually demanding titles such as picture books. Most attempted e-books have been YA and middle-grade novels. At least one company, however, is focusing entirely on picture e-books (see ipicturebooks.com).
- "U-Publish.com" is both a book and a web site (at http://www.u-publish.com/) with details on self-publishing, now updated with the latest e-book developments.
- E-books may be specialized hardware devices, used only to display electronic equivalents of books, or file formats supported in software on generic personal computers. The latter are a viable option right now--provided the reader wants to put up with reading off the screen.
- Peanut Press at www.peanutpress.com: files encoded for the specific Palm device used to download them, so that no other Palm device can open them.
- Adobe at www.adobe.com: 'PDF Merchant' distributes Acrobat files (readable on many types of computers) with encryption (files cannot be printed; if the file is passed to another user, the reader software requests payment info, possibly resulting in an additional sale)
- Electronic media spin-offs
- CD-ROMs packaged with books
- "Happy and Max: the pirate treasure", "Little factory"
- Stand-alone CD-ROM versions of books
- "Polar Express (CD-ROM edition)"
- Web sites
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