Children's Book ResearchBy Chris Bailey

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Front Cover:The front cover shows a terrified boy running from a wolf. The title of the book is written around the illustration, with the significant words coloured in red and increased in size: “BOY-CRIED-WOLF”. The entire front cover is covered in the illustration, with hardly any room left to spare, this is why the authors name is compacted into the bottom right corner.

Front Cover Art:The images on the front cover are very basic, rough looking drawings. Such as the colourless eyes and big round mouth. There are very simple lines showing motion from the arms and legs of the boy, and the wolf behind him. The colours are not very bright, they are quite cold and not very exciting. There is a lot of dark colours (browns and greys).

Front Cover Font:The font used on the front cover is the same as used inside the book, just scaled up a lot. The font appears to be Times, this is a very simple and easy to read font that also stands out immensely.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Boy-Who-Cried-Wolf/dp/1842708333/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422452856&sr=8-1&keywords=the+boy+who+cried+wolf+book

The Boy Who Cried Wolf:

Text Placement: The text is placed beneath the large illustration. This allows the child to enjoy the large eye catching image, before they move on to reading the text.

Image Placement: The Image is in the upper centre of the page, with a small empty border around it. This leaves just enough room for the text. The image is very eye catching as it is central in the image and takes up most of the page.

Image/Text Balance: There is a lot more image than text, this is due to the very low amount of text, the image is used to further show what the text is describing.

Number Of Pages: There are 28 pages in the book, with an illustration for every page with the story text. There are so many pages for such a simple story because there is so little text on each page.

Image Reference: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Boy-Who-Cried-Wolf/dp/1842708333/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422452856&sr=8-1&keywords=the+boy+who+cried+wolf+book#reader_1842708333

The Boy Who Cried Wolf:

Images: The images are very simple, yet contain all the details needed. It shows us the boy and his clothes, what appears to be his village behind him, and the rural environment with sparse trees and tall mountains. It also shows his bicycle and small details such as the scattered stones on the path.

Colours: The colours are all very natural and relaxed. Lots of greens and browns, pale yellow, reds and blues. This means that the images aren’t over powering and the text can still be read without the child losing concentration.

Image Reference: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Boy-Who-Cried-Wolf/dp/1842708333/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422452856&sr=8-1&keywords=the+boy+who+cried+wolf+book#reader_1842708333

Little Red Riding Hood

Front cover: The front cover shows little red riding hood skipping joyfully down a path surrounded by bright green landscape. Behind her is her cottage house and her mother watching her skip away.

The colours are all very bright and saturated, giving the effect of happiness and excitement on the first impressions.

There is a large amount of red and green on the front cover, the red banner down the side, little red riding hoods apparel, the font colour, and the bright green grassy background.

The font used is a mix between classic and fun curves, giving the effect of the old fairy tale with a modern twist.

Little Red Riding Hood

Text Placement: The text is placed above the illustrations, so they are the first thing the reader looks at, before moving onto viewing the illustration. The font is medium in size, times new roman, and is black, standing out greatly from the pure white background.

Image Placement: The images are placed beneath the text, and fall out of the books borders in order to give them more depth, such as little red riding hoods dress falling past the frame and the granny peaking from around the side of it.

Image/Text balance: The images are very big and take up almost all of the page, where as the text only takes up a very small proportion of it.

Number of pages: This particular book has 32 pages, each with an illustration and text.

Little Red Riding Hood

The images include quite a lot of detail, yet they still stick to the traditional old school cartoon theme. The colours and drawings all appear free hand and sketched making them similar to the original old story illustrations.

The colours aren’t as bright and immersive as the front cover. The background is pale white, which allows the illustrations and text to sit above it nicely, but it is very boring and un-complex compared to the front cover.

The Three Little Pigs

The Front Cover: The front cover shows 5 pigs altogether, 3 of which are the main subjects of the image, and 2 which appear to be parent pigs. The colours are very dry and washed out, making the book look traditional and almost worn for that old look. The illustrations are very traditional compared to the computer generated ones you frequently see nowadays on children's books.

The text is in a classical looking font with a but of a wobble to it to give it that look of freedom and child friendliness. The colour is blue just like the banner down the left hand side. Blue it the most common colour in the entire image with lots of blue denim as the pigs apparel.

The Three Little Pigs

Text Placement: The text is placed above the illustrations, about 2/3 of the way up which appears un-usual. This has been done because the large amount of space below and the small amount above is dense with illustrations. The text is in new times roman, in black against a white background which allows it to stand out very clearly.

Image Placement: The images have been placed very well as they fit perfectly on the page without having to cut any corners or squeeze the text too high.

Image/Text balance: There is a large amount of illustrations on the page compared to relatively small amount of text. This allows the child to view the detailed image of the pigs after reading the writing to improve the understanding and interpretation of what they just read.

The contains 32 fully illustrated pages with text.

The Three Little Pigs

Very similar to the front cover, the images keep the same house style of traditional hand drawn images, with old rusty looking washed out colours for the aged effect. The images are not made to be bold or stand out very much, making this much more of a bed time story than an exciting picture book for the early afternoon.