Words Count

According to an article published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, adults in the United States have a working vocabulary of more than 42,000 words. [Impressive until you realize the Oxford English Dictionary holds the definitions for 171,476 word, not counting 47,156 obsolete words. Gadzooks!] That represents words these adults have heard and stored somewhere in the nooks and crannies of their craniums, and are able to recognize and understand the meaning of the word. Working vocabulary, words that get daily use, tends to be a great deal smaller, 5,000 to 10,000 words, depending on your socio-economic and educational levels.

Language acquisition begins before the ink is dry on a baby’s birth certificate, and by the time a toddler is ready for pull-ups they own a “listening” vocabulary of several hundred words. Children in the prime picture book audience age of three to five years are acquiring both receptive (words they understand) and expressive vocabulary (words they can use to communicate) at a rapid clip, so picture books are the perfect vehicle for delivering rich language.

The more words a child hears in “active” language (hearing people around them speaking to each other and to the child, as opposed to “passive” language on television) the more easily they will learn to read. More words mean a child is better able to interact and learn from the world around them. More Words = Reading Success.

It’s tempting for those of us who are in love with children’s literature and early childhood education to put our faith in our ability to expand children’s vocabulary by reading rattling-good picture books aloud to them. As useful as that is, the good news is that a child will acquire the vocabulary skills needed to make learning to read easier, even if their parents are illiterate, as long as they are growing up in a “language rich” environment where grown-ups talk and sing to them.

As writers, choosing Just The Right Word adds value to the story. The vocabulary you use helps differentiate one character from another, and gives clues to the setting even before the illustrator gets his or her mitts on it.

Why not choose the RICHEST, JUICIEST, most DELECTABLE words we can when writing for children? We’ve got 171,476 + words available from all corners of our delicious, polyglot, mongrel language to play with!

Rich language is a gift to the grown-up reading the book aloud, or to the older child reading-aloud-in-their-head. The culinary arts have a technical term for the texture of foods and beverages: “mouthfeel”. Words can also have mouthfeel. It is a delight to read William Steig or Rosemary Wells aloud. Consider this passage from The Amazing Bone by Steig

It was a brilliant day, and instead of going straight home from school, Pearl dawdled. She watched the grownups in town at their grownup work, things she might someday be doing.

She saw the street cleaners sweeping the streets and she looked in at the bakery on Parsnip Lane and saw the bakers taking hot loaves of pumpernickel out of the oven and powdering crullers with sugar dust.

On Cobble Road she stopped at Maltby’s barn and stood gawking as the old gaffers pitched their ringing horseshoes and spat tobacco juice.

“Dawdled”, “Parsnip”, “Pumpernickel”, “Crullers”, “Cobble”, “Gawking”, “Gaffers” strong, specific words that use parts of your lips and tongue that seldom get a workout. These are the kind of words that wake up jaded grown-up ears. Imagine how interesting they are to the ears of a four-year-old.

Another “rich language” book is Felix Feels Better by Rosemary Wells. [I’ll wait right here while you run to the library or local independent bookstore for a copy. Okay, got one? Go ahead and read it.]

Hooray for Rosemary! I love that she repeats “Felix” and “Felix’s mama” on almost every page, and juicy words like “peaky”, “perky”, “prunes”, “toasty” and “boost” (not to mention the oh-so-satisfying “moonbeam” and “buttered toast”). The book weighs in at a mere 264 words, (28 of which are the word “Felix”) but what a vocabulary wallop it packs!

For the sake of our stories, for love of the grown-ups who will read them aloud OVER and OVER, and for love of the children who will absorb them and use them as goggles to view the world, let’s make every word count.

Children's Novelty Books

Reading material is brain food for children. Chapter books are the healthy carbs. Narrative non-fiction is the meat. Informational texts are the veggies, and graphic novels are dessert. In this healthy reading diet, novelty books are the bag of gummy bears your grandpa slips you when your nobody’s looking.

Known in the library world as Toy/Moveable books, these literary confections break the rules of standard book format in every way imaginable. Forget multiple pages layered between two covers, read (in the West) from right to left, front to back, sequentially. These books have built in features, usually physical, that break the tidy-pages-between-two-covers format.

The definition of novelty is something new, unexpected, and surprising. In novelty books, anything goes. The only constant is charm and delight.

Here are some of the most recognizable novelty styles, with an example or two of each. (ISBNs are included if you would like to look them up.)

Touch-and-Feel / Tactile Books

Board books with fabrics and different textures glued on, for very young children. Little or no narrative is needed.

Lift the flap

The most basic style of novelty books, with physical flaps that lift up to reveal a hidden part of the illustration. Often marketed for babies and toddlers. Examples abound, but let’s go with the Spot books as a wonderful exemplar.

· Where’s Spot! By Eric Hill ISBN 978-0-3992-4046-1

Pop-Up books

Pop-Up books are marvels of paper engineering with complex figures that go from flat to three dimensional as the cover opens or at page turns. Often there are pull tabs that create an animation. Robert Sabuda has designed a shelf-full of these treasures, many fairy tales, classic children’s books, and a non-fiction series with author Matthew Reinhart. (The one below was new to me and I intend to order it for the library tomorrow.)

· Ten Horse Farm by Robert Sabuda ISBN 978-0-7636-6398-8

See-through Books

See-through books have holes in the page that reveal a part of the illustration on the following page or all the way to the last page of the book. One well-trodden trope is a book where a parent or grandparent glues a picture of the child on the inside back cover, so the hole makes the child’s face appear on every page. Others, like Allan Ahlberg’s Peek-a-Boo, hint at the action on the following page.

· Peek-a-Boo by Janet and Allan Ahlberg ISBN 978-0-6708-7192-6

Altered Books

Back in the 1920s, a manic artist named Peter Newell wrote and illustrated some delightfully subversive children’s books. In The Rocket Book, a hole drilled through the pages shows the path of a bottle rocket blasting its way from the basement of an apartment building up through many floors and the mayhem it creates on its way to the roof. The Hole Book is similar, but follows a stray bullet through many walls and misadventures.

· The Rocket Book by Peter Newell ISBN 978-0-8048-0505-6

· The Hole Book by Peter Newell ISBN 978-0-8048-1498-0

More recently, John Scieszka and friends created Battle Bunny in a standard book format, but the illustrations make it seem that a kid has taken a sweet little book about a Birthday Bunny and used a marker to change the story. The two stories overlap in a comical and (dare I say) novel way.

· Battle Bunny by John Scieszka, Mac Barnett, et al. ISBN 978-1-4424-4673-1

Transparent/Projectable books

Projectable books are printed on plastic or acetate, and are meant to be read in a darkened room. The reader shines a flashlight through the page and an image is projected onto a ceiling or wall.

Whoo’s There: a bedtime shadow book by Heather and Martha Zschock ISBN 978-1-5935-9904-1

Toy books

Toy books are books that can be played with as toys. Some have wheels and can be zoomed along the floor. Carousel and House books stand up on their own when the front and back covers are attached together with laces or magnets, and the made to look like a dollhouse or other building.

Way back in the 18th century, children just learning to read used hornbooks, and some enterprising publisher realized the paddle-like books could be made slightly bigger to be used as a racket in a badminton-like game (presumably when the teacher was busy elsewhere)!

· DK Wheelie Books: Tractor ISBN 978-0-7894-4307-6

· A Victorian Dollhouse by Maggie Bateson ISBN 978-0-3120-6228-6

· 18th century Battledores (if interested, you may start down this antiquarian rabbit-hole by searching for Hornbooks on the internet. You’re on your own!)

Shape Books

Shape books were popular in the late 1800s. The covers and pages were die-cut in the shape of animals or toys, but the stories inside could just have easily been printed in a standard format.

Only a Doll https://maxwell.bridgew.edu/exhibits/shape/only.html

The shape had no influence on how the story unfolded. Unlike…

… Peter Newell again! The Slant Book, has a skewed cover that creates a big “V” when opened. The story involves a baby in a baby-buggy, and the odd cover shape gives the illusion that the buggy is careening downhill.

· The Slant Book by Peter Newell ISBN 0-8048-0532-0

Interactive books

These books are novel because of the way the reader interacts with them. The Choose Your Own series requires the reader to make decisions about what should happen next in the story. This results in the one book being able to be read a different way each time through. I have heard them described as a maze book. (And I suppose books with actual mazes, and seek-and-find books could land here, as well.)

Press Here by Tullet asks little readers to push, shake, and clap to make things happen on the next page. Minimalist and extremely low-tech, this book is a marvel. [If you are ever full of ennui or down in the dumps, search out Herve Tullet on YouTube and watch him marshal a whole bunch of little kids in a giant art project. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xCcKk_wNUE ]

Pat the Bunny could be shelved here, or back with the Touch-and-Feel books.

· Choose Your Own Adventure series

· Press Here Herve Tullet ISBN 978-0-8118-7954-5

· Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt ISBN 978-0-3071-2000-7

Books With Accessories

Some books come with little extras that are necessary to tell the story. In There’s a Mouse About the House the reader manipulates a little cardboard mouse (with string tail) through holes in the pages to find a snack while avoiding the cat.

The Jolly Postman by Janet and Allan Ahlberg follows a postman around fairytale country as he delivers letters. Tiny envelopes contain letters from the characters that add a second layer of story to the book.

· There’s a Mouse About the House by Richard Fowler ISBN 978-0881101546

· The Jolly Postman by Janet & Allan Ahlberg ISBN 978-0-3161-2644-1

Bath books/cloth books

Waterproof and/or chewable, these books seldom have more than six pages.

Books with Sound

These books, with buttons to push as a kind of aural rebus, are the bane of my existence. Every once in a while (usually by mistake) one of these noisy books makes it on the shelf at the library and hoots/moos/clankity-clanks/wee-oh-wee-oh-wee-ohs until the battery wears out. It is an excellent gift choice for the child of a frenemy.

But wait! There’s More! This is not an exhaustive list of all the kinds of books that could be considered novelties. There are some novelty books that defy categorization. Sam’s Sandwich by David Pelham comes to mind. (ISBN 978-0-7636-7808-1) Is it a shape book? Toy book? Lift the flap book? Where do we put The Little Fur Family by Margaret Brown (ISBN 978-0-0607-5960-5)?

(Actually, I can answer that question. We should put The Little Fur Family into the hands of every four-year-old on the planet.)

Are you intrigued? Has this sparked some ideas for books you would like to make?

Here is some real world advice from author Salina Yoon, in response to a question about writing novelty books. (If you aren’t familiar with Salina Yoon’s books, stop reading and run to a library or bookstore. Go. Right. Now. Finish reading this later.)

“Did someone say NOVELTY??? I’ve been alerted… and snuck out of my work cave to answer this question.

…I am an author/illustrator/designer of novelty books…and I can assure you that a novelty market exists. But I can also tell you that publishers rarely acquire novelty-text only, unless you are a bestselling, well-known author. (I am not one of these… so I’ve never sold text-only to anyone!)

When I submit novelties, the entire package is created. In fact, I hand-build a dummy that looks like a finished, printed book so that the publisher can see, touch, and feel how well all three elements work together: the format, the art, and the concept/text.

Most publishers either create novelties in-house OR (more commonly), they are bought from the book packagers who’s already developed the novelties… and publishers simply get to choose from a catalog what they’d like to add to their list. This makes novelty acquisitions even trickier.

This is to say unless you have a complete vision for this book, it would be a very tough sell. Most novelty books are art and format driven… so art and format is KEY in making a decision about a novelty submission. Also, novelties are super expensive to produce,…BUT…they have to keep the retail price low… so the profit margins are much less than a traditional picture book. This means the expectations on a novelty (sales qty wise) is much higher… meaning, … it’s a very tough sell.

Board books are a completely different animal. These are typically board-book editions of previous picture books. Many classic picture books have board book editions. If you see a 24 page board book (or longer), it was mostly likely a picture book first. If you want to go this route,… you must sell your ms first as a picture book. And if it’s age appropriate, it could have a life in board book edition down the line. But typically, a storybook doesn’t go straight to board.

So… my advice is this. If you strongly feel this should be a novelty book, develop it that way! And show it that way. Even if you can’t draw, put together a dummy and include the flaps, and do a rough sketch to show what’s beneath the flaps… to explain the Interactive experience. You can find the imprints that publish novelty simply by looking at published novelties, and see their info. Most major houses require agents.

Best of luck!!!

PS: My experiences are only with the major houses (Scholastic, S&S, Random House, Macmillan, Penguin…) so it may not apply to smaller presses. Perhaps smaller presses or book packagers take novelty ms? I do not know.

Back to my cave…”

[August 17, 2012 03:13 PM SCBWI.org/boards/index.php?topic=64071.0]

And a little bit more…

John Newbery’s Pretty Little Pocket Book (1744) could be considered one of the first novelty books for children. The book itself was straightforward, but came with a ball (if the recipient was a boy) or a pin-cushion (if the recipient was a girl) that was red on one side, black on the other. Pins were meant to be stuck in one side or the other for good and bad deeds. I’m guessing even in the 18th century a child would give an eye-roll on being given this as a gift.

More early novelty books can be explored at the National Library of the Netherlands. Genieten! (Enjoy!)

https://www.kb.nl/en/themes/novelty-books-in-the-childrens-books-collection#:~:text=Novelty%20books%20are%20books%20that,the%20reader%20opens%20the%20book.

Text Page Turns... and pacing!*

Page Turns are all about setting the pace for your reader. In both fiction and informational picture books, page turns drive the narrative, pulling the reader through all the twists and turns of the story.

The effects of page turns are amplified in read-alouds. Since the target audience of most picture books are children too young to read, the text breaks give concrete instructions to the person reading aloud.

The age of your intended audience affects page turns, too.

· Toddlers need time to absorb the illustrations and need more time to gather in the words they are hearing, so each page can have action that is self-contained. One action follows another like beads on a string, rather than a moving stream.

· Babies need even less continuity, which is why even board book literary adaptations work like concept books, with only one or two words per page. Crack that book open to any page and the baby has as much story as he or she can handle.

The pace you set can leave openings for the questions and comments common to didactic reading, where the audience is pulled in for interaction. But didactic reading is not always appropriate, which leads us to consider voice and mood.

· If the mood of the story is dramatic, an accelerating pace, with “what’s-going-to-happen-next” builds suspense. Each page is a bit of a cliff-hanger or hints at what’s coming.

· If the mood is comical or purposefully over-the-top, a fast pace amplifies the silliness. Each page is an opportunity for either planting or payoff.

· If the mood is lyrical, page turns should provide smooth transitions that don’t break the flow of the language, and don’t invite interruption.

*as usual, for every great book that fits these patterns, there’s a great one that doesn’t, usually because the illustrations are carrying the page turn cues.