Customer Reviews

Writing and Illustrating Children's Books for Publication: Two Perspectives

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is "the" book on authoring and illustrating Children's books. Each step of putting together a manuscript and book dummy is laid out clearly. If you do one lesson a week, you will be ready to send your manuscript and dummy to publishers in eight weeks. The illustrations and case studies in this book are topnotch. My daughter and I wrote a Science Fiction Story using the "folktale method", and we received an "honorable mention" in a national fiction contest on the first try. I am a librarian and I am impressed with the quality of this book. Everything about it is asthetically pleasing. Sometimes, I grab a cup of coffee and a blanket and curl up and just look at the beautiful illustrations by the award winning illustrators that are featured--just for inspiration.

This book is both an excellent reference book for the want to be child book author as well as a beautiful book to own. The print and paper quality are excellent, the cover art and interior illustrations are captivating. There are excercises, reading lists and case histories to aid an aspiring writer or illustrator.

This book contains a wealth of information and is also well organized and an overall interesting read. Prior to publication I purchased this title, several years and now three children's books later, I still turn to this title as a reference book. Having purchased many books on this subject, this IS the BEST single source I have found. The information is great for the writer as well as the illustrator.

A bit higher in price than some but very well worth it. If you could only buy one book on this subject, I would urge you to make this the ONE!

...I rated this book a "3" because the information contained for illustrators was minimal & the art work was old and dated. This book was directed to the prospective writer of children's books and illustration was a by-line.... It was excellent for the "writer to be" in giving helpful guidelines: how to get started, submission of manuscripts, and the subject matter which would attract publishers.

My monetary resources are limited so finding informative resource material is a must for me. This Book admirably fills the bill. With its exercises and readability, it engages the reader from the first. Info on not only rendering, it gives a lot of detail on submitting. Colorful and straightforward text, a great reading list, and suggested assignments all focus the reader to the goal of being and illustrator. Written from both sides of the fence, artist and editor, it gives the reader a realistic view of what to expect from the field and why. I think this is a must have for anyone in the business or interested in the business.

What little information there was about illustrating books was too basic and there was no index. Also, it included many illustrations from old children's books without identifying the illustrator or the book they were from. More than likely the copyright had expired on these images yet this practice irked me for two reasons-first, this shows a lack of respect, for not only those neglected illustrators but for all illustrators, and second, an aspiring illustrator may have been moved to investigate and study an illustrator that they liked had the name been listed. Bad form for a book whose intent is to teach.

If you really want to learn about illustrating picturebooks, check out Writing With Pictures by Uri Schulevitz.

This is a good book about writing childrens' books, but with outdated examples and with bad and very outdated illustration examples. I had to laugh when the author mentioned the popular childrens' books of the day for preteens being the "Goosebumps" series and the "Sweet Valley High" series. Ha ha! Funny!