Analysing the components of a children's picture book

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1630632_(Table of contents)

Children’s picture books are essential for children to improve their skills related to meaning making and visual perception. This paper will examine the design components of children’s picture books to propose new approaches for children’s book creators. In our present era, it is highly common to see products specifically designed for children almost everywhere. However, it is known that people, who lived during the Medieval period lacked awareness and appreciation regarding childhood as a formative stage in every individuals life. During the Renaissance, there was a rising awareness of the importance of the concept of child development. Noble families recognized the differences between a child and an adult. Some of them started to write educational books concerning their children’s development, which could be viewed as an improvement of the concept of childhood in the family. This increased awareness was held in such high esteem with the parents that they hired tutors so their children could have a proper education. With this awareness children became a relevant part of the family, so much so that families started to ask artists to depict them as part of the household. From then on, childhood as a concept appeared as a crucial element of daily life. The creation of products specifically designed for children started with clothing, toys and children’s books, whose numbers increased with the developments in technology and improvements in education. Writers of children’s books realized that child’s perception is not the same as an adult’s, so they began using both visual and textual elements that they considered to be more enjoyable for young readers. Famous writers and painters of the time such as William Blake, Randolph Caldecott and Sir John Tenniel, became the pioneers of modern children’s picture books. Over the years, picture books have improved considerably, taking into account children’s visual perception, meaning making, and individual expectations as concepts of design. This paper aims to analyze the components of a children’s picture book, ranging from fables to modern stories, with an examination of specific principles of design which developed over time, in particular layout, illustration and typesetting as visual communication, and variable techniques that have been used to create picture books since the 19th century.