Research

Matthew Pinkney

I want a FriendThe book has a hand-drawn style to it, with colors overlapping the black lines to make it look very scrappy. All of the characters show human-like qualities and are faithfully drawn to the way normal people do, with exaggerated expressions such as large eyes and ears. I can imagine kids liking this style a lot, as it helps them distinguish all of the characters from each other in a similar way that the ‘Horrid Henry’ books do. Both the images and text are kept separate from each other. On every page, the text is placed below the images, which are displayed in a black border over a white page. This makes it easy for younger readers to easily separate the two different elements and enjoy them for what they are without getting confused or going on a hunt for the text. The font used in the book is Sans-Serif, and there is around two to three sentences of text on each page. The writing is also very large, making it easy for children to read it by themselves. In total there are 22 pages throughout the book, and the height and width dimensions are the same.

Author: Tony RossIllustrator: Tony RossPublisher: Harper Collins Children’s Books

The Tiger who came to Tea

The children’s classic features illustrations on the pages that look like they are hand-drawn, but are slightly more realistic than the previous book, ‘I want a friend’. All of the characters are drawn more accurately with more realistic facial features and expressions, which helps readers figure out their emotions easier and possibly relate to them more.

Both the images and text are kept separate from each other. The text itself is always placed below the images, keeping the book consistent throughout and not confusing readers at any point. They also don’t differ in size much, meaning that they (roughly) take up the same amount of space as each other.

The font used in the book is Serif, and is fairly large. Each of the 32 pages consists of two or three sentences that take up around 30% of the overall space. The use of a Serif font helps guide readers through the book, subconsciously.

Author: Judith KerrIllustrator: Judith KerrPublisher: Harper Collins Children’s Books

Lost and FoundThe illustrations in this children’s book are similar to the other other two’s, in that they aren’t completely realistic. They all depict their characters in exaggerated and unusual ways, while still keeping their basic features and shapes.

The text itself is written over parts of the pictures themselves. Doing helps helps integrate the words into the actual story and potentially make the reading more fun and involving for young readers. It eliminates any potential white space from showing up and makes the book look more full and colorful However, I can’t help but think the images would have looked better if they were left alone and had text placed under them instead.

Sans-Serif has been used throughout the book, with the text itself looking like it was hand-written by a a young person (although it obviously wasn’t). There is also a limited amount of text on each of the 32 pages, with only one or two sentences being shown on some of them. I feel that it would be better if some of the pages were combined together to make a thinner looing book. I can see a lot of kids being put off by the books size and quantity of pages, along with the fact that the text is relatively small. Adding more to it by combining pages would not only fix this issue, but it would help it stand out more and make it more identifiable.

The dimensions of the book are: 25.9 x 0.5 x 26.5

Author: Oliver JeffersIllustrator: Oliver JeffersPublisher: Harper Collins Children's Books