JUNE - AND THOUGHTS ON WRITING A PICTURE BOOK. Penny Dolan

This half term holiday, I spent some time in the Library, chatting about Under-Five Storytime sessions , and about why this or that book is satisfying to read aloud to children and their grown-ups. Sometimes, while choosing these picture books, I sigh inwardly, and wish I had the wisdom, skill and patience to create such small treasures. 

Then, today, I came across these lines, written by illustrator and writer Shirley Hughes, which seem just perfect for today's post. 

"The text is a matter of writing around the pictures in my head and, some time later, as part of the pattern of the page. I reach for a pencil at a very early stage to get down some roughs. I need to know what the characters look like. This process helps to crystalise the plot.

With picture books, the fewer words the better. But that isn't to say they are all that easy to write. The great danger is overwriting (as many skilled writers of older fiction tend to do). The aim is to hone it down and down, and to make it  flow rhythmically, like a phrase of music, in and out of the pictures. It should end up sweetly and satisfyingly within the thirty-two-page (or twenty-four-page) format, including prelims and endpapers, which is usually all that the strictures of colour printing will allow. Most importantly it should be bearable for grown ups and older siblings to read not once, but over and over again.

For this very young age group the background of the story, much of the characterisation and humour, is there to be discovered in the pictures . . . It's a first introduction to fiction which is not to be missed."

 Lines that explain so very much. Thank you, Shirley Hughes, for these and for all your work.

 

Penny Dolan

 Text taken from 'Writers Writing', edited for the Edinburgh Book Festival by Jenny Brown and Shona Morris (1993)