Exercise: Working for children

I collected images for each of the age groups by looking in several locations. First, as I am a primary school teacher, I have lots of books and resources aimed at these age brackets. I then specifically looked for images in sections of shops for children (e.g. magazines, toys, greetings cards) and took photographs of these on my phone.

My ideas

Older age groups

scary bat

Although a bat may be a little cliché for a ‘scary’ animal, I thought it was appropriate for the age group in other ways too. A bat is an unusual mammal and represents a sense of freedom with flight. These older age groups could be on the cusp of change (schools/friends/bodies) and somehow a bat seemed to link to this.

Pre-school (3-5)

wild bear

A bear is familiar enough to a child ad ‘wild’ enough to fit with the theme. Pawprints and claws jumped out to me when brainstorming, while a bear has a certain comforting, cuddly quality that young children are subjected to from a young age. I settled on depicting a baby bear too, to further connect with the target age group while still linking to the ‘wild’ theme.

Development

I played around with different bat poses and liked the idea of combining traditionally ‘scary’ things with the bat, like Halloween and ghosts and a haunted house. I wanted to use a style that would appeal to older age groups; some picture books for older readers employ a comic book style, so this was designed as one illustration that perhaps would be used as part of a sequence in a story.

I used a different style for the illustration for pre-school children. I wanted the background to be very textured but simple in terms of detail and shape, then for the character to be black and white (using biro) and very detailed. I think it works well because the character is the focus, with minimal distraction in the background. I prefer the top image and think this would look good as a front cover for a book or a greetings card.

Reflections

Target ages – are they really as clear-cut?

I don’t believe target ages are as clear-cut as the groupings listed in this task. When I teach in schools, I see children reading and enjoying books that are intended for much younger or much older audiences, with a huge variety of images and styles of illustration. I think, with every child, a progression can be seen as they get older, but it will not be exactly the same for every child and will not necessarily move at the same pace.

How did the function of image and text differ within the different age groupings?

Going back to the idea of a progression; generally, children start by having books/magazines etc. that mostly consist of illustration and gradually more text is introduced. Also, the text may be bigger, bolder, or shaped in some way in young children’s picture books, and, as they get older, children are expected to read chunks of text accompanied by fewer images. That doesn’t mean there are not picture books for older children; the comic book format can be appropriate for any age group. Because of this progression, generally, the images are telling the story/giving the information for younger children, whereas the text is mostly telling the story/giving the information for older children.

What is your response to the idea “all children’s illustration has bright colours”?

I disagree. Lots of the illustrations I saw were colourful, but some used subtle palettes and a minimal selection of colours. There were many illustrations that just used black and white, with the addition of one or two bright colours. When looking at the range of children’s books, I think most younger children’s books were very bright, but moving into confident readers (7-8+) colours were more subtle, or darker, or minimal. It depended on the purpose of the illustration and the style of the product it was used for. Examples include the cover of ‘Wonder’ (blue/black/white) and some very subtle realistic palettes, like the Morpurgo covers.