Nothing But a Number
Understanding the Ins and Outs of Publishing Books for Children
“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.”
―George Bernard Shaw
It’s a little bit funny that I am the bearer of today’s message because I am a person who has never been near a child in my whole entire life. I’m not sure I even ever was a child. I suspect I arose from the seafoam one morning as a complete adult or perhaps sprang fully formed into existence already wearing armor. I have no memory of the actual event so I can’t say for sure but either scenario seems likely.
In the same vein as Tuesday’s article, today’s topic addresses some esoteric book-industry-specific knowledge that just doesn’t need to be as esoteric as it is. A lot of people tell me they want to write “for children.” I don’t know why. You could just write something for adults and then wait a bit. But if writing for children is something you want to do, you may be interested to know that there is an entire taxonomy of writing for the “anyone who isn’t an adult” demographic and if you want to break in, you could benefit from knowing it.
I don’t write children’s books myself, and I haven’t done a lot of paid work in that publishing space (I’ve done a smidge), but I fell in with a group of picture book writers and illustrators while I was living in California and was adopted into their critique group. They kindly read and share feedback on my adultier-adult-definitely-nothing-to-do-with-kids prose, and I give them my layperson’s thoughts on their projects (again, less than zero knowledge about children), and they accept those in the helpful spirit that I intend. I have learned tons about the kidlit scene from those folks. Anyway, many thanks to the Northridge Friends Picture Book Critique Group. You are the coolest.
Herewith, from your friend Catherine who doesn’t know one single thing about children, everything you need to know about the mysterious field of kidlit.
Kidlit
Generally speaking, the term kidlit—an informal term for children’s literature—refers to books that are written for anyone who is not yet an adult. Babies, kids, tweens, teens, young adults, and even “college age” folks (not to say there’s a correct age to be in college) in their late teens and early twenties.
There’s some controversy over this. Some people call kidlit a separate category that does not encompass young adult (YA) and new adult (NA). Keep that in mind as you use kidlit as an umbrella term to refer to anything from NA on down to babies. If you’re writing YA and NA specifically, you may wish to always refer to your work as YA or NA and not reference the broad heading of kidlit, especially if you’re speaking to an agent or editor who might shut you down if you say “kidlit” and they only represent or publish writing for teens and older. But for the purpose of today’s article, I’m going to tackle YA and NA under the auspices of kidlit.
What characterizes kidlit? The main thing is that the story and the writing are intended to be read by—or to—a child. The audience is a child. There are a lot of factors I’ll talk about that make up the ways in which kidlit appeals to the target audience, depending upon their age and reading comprehension level. And while kidlit is generally written to appeal to children or young people, that’s not to say plain old adults can’t enjoy it, too. Something to keep in mind when writing kidlit for the youngest readers is that while your end user is a child, the person making the purchasing decision is almost always an adult who is buying the book for that child. And in the YA and NA space, there are many end users who are adults buying for themselves.
Readability of the writing is a factor. The writing level and vocabulary need to be tuned to the comprehension level of the intended audience, so kidlit is generally written with simpler, easier-to-understand language than books for adults. That said, you can’t categorize something as kidlit just because it is easy to read and understand the language. Hemingway wrote at a fifth- to sixth-grade level but I don’t know if you’d give For Whom the Bell Tolls to your ten year old. I mean, maybe you would. I’d probably let a ten year old watch Game of Thrones. This is why no one asks me to babysit.
Characters are another factor, and this is something that a lot of folks even inside the industry (critics especially) get confused about. Not every book with a child or young adult as its main character is kidlit. Life of Pi and Never Let Me Go are about teenagers but they are not written for teenagers. Conversely, not all children’s books have a child or young adult as the star. Off the top of my head, Howl’s Moving Castle is a middle-grade book with adult protagonists; but kidlit also often has a protagonist that isn’t a human being at all. Hungry caterpillars, velveteen plushies, and terribly put-upon trees also come to mind. Just because a book has young characters doesn’t mean it’s kidlit, and just because something is kidlit doesn’t mean it has young characters.
Theme also comes into play. The younger the target audience, the simpler the themes are likely to be—but that doesn’t mean you can’t explore challenging themes in this space. Kidlit, including books for very young children, can tackle very difficult topics (eg, The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld). It just means that if you’re going to stray from the garden path of themes like friendship, understanding your identity, building self confidence and esteem, and so on, then you will need to be very careful to handle the themes you choose to explore in a sensitive and age-appropriate way.
Keep in mind that there’s tons of overlap from age group to age group—not everyone’s reading habits and tastes develop at the same rate. If I say “young adult books are for people from age twelve to eighteen,” that’s just a guideline and it’s not prescriptive. Tons of people younger than twelve and tons of people older than eighteen enjoy young adult lit.
Let’s take a look at some of the biggest subcategories in the kidlit space and the characteristics of these types of books that you may want to keep in mind before you start writing.
Picture Books
A picture book is any book that combines a verbal narrative with a visual narrative with an equal emphasis on both or a greater emphasis on the visuals. That qualifier is there because sometimes books contain illustrations but are not picture books. (I recognize that graphic novels and comic books could also fit that description, but exclude those from this category.) Picture books are usually targeted for children from infancy to eight years of age, with those for the youngest users termed board books (I’ll cover board books specifically in a moment).
Most picture books are going to be about thirty-two pages long, with some a little shorter and some a little longer (almost always in multiples of eight pages but that’s a topic for another day). Across those thirty-two pages (give or take) will be distributed anywhere from 600 to 1,000 words—again, sometimes fewer but only rarely more. Each single page or two-page spread will contain an illustration and the words that go with it, usually forming a complete thought.
If you want to write and illustrate your picture book personally, you’ll be shopping your picture book around as a dummy. A dummy organizes your text and illustrations into the thirty-two pages that the finished book will have, although you won’t be expected to have polished, final art. If you’re a writer and you’d like to shop a picture book manuscript, I don’t suggest hiring an illustrator yourself. You’ll have better luck selling the manuscript to a publisher who will then select an illustrator for the book. (If you’re going the self-publishing route, naturally, you’ll need to handle the illustrations yourself or hire or collaborate with someone to do so.)
Personally, my favorite picture book is Millions of Cats by Wanda Gág. It’s kind of violent. Exposure to it as a child is probably why I’m like this.
Board Books
Board books are picture books for the youngest users: Babies and toddlers, from as young as you can get them to focus on a book to four years old. Board books get their name from the very thick, cardboard-like stock they are printed on, which can stand up to small humans who haven’t yet learned not to destroy everything they touch. They are usually sixteen to twenty-four pages (the board books, not the small humans) and will have up to 300 words, often with fewer. They may incorporate other elements besides illustrations and words—for instance, Pat the Bunny.
Beginning Readers
Picture books that are meant for a child to read on their own are categorized as beginning readers (or first reader). These are the picture books for older children (kindergarten through second grade) that are simple enough in terms of plot and vocabulary for the child to read by themself before they are quite ready to move on to chapter books. Not all picture books are either beginning reader or board books. Some picture books may be too complex for a young child to read on their own, even if they are starting to be able to read independently.
Middle Grade
Middle grade (MG) refers to books written for children between the ages of eight and twelve. While these may have an illustration here and there, most of them are going to be prose-based chapter books. This is where you shelve Roald Dahl, Kwame Alexander, Madeleine L’Engle. Middle grade tends to be written at a simple grade level, without complex vocabulary, and explores themes that are important to kids in this age group: Making and losing friends, bullying, physical changes, the school experience. The word count ranges from about 25,000 to 50,000, with books for the youngest middle-grade readers coming in a little lower and books for the most sophisticated middle-grade readers coming in a little higher. Further, middle-grade books written in genres that tend to run long (fantasy, I mean fantasy) might be a little longer than other types.
Middle-grade books are the first books that young readers are likely to choose for themselves, although there is often an adult who has the final say in the purchase. This changes the way middle-grade is written and especially marketed versus, for instance, picture books (chosen and purchased by adults) or YA/NA (chosen and purchased by the reader).
There are important distinctions between MG and YA, but many people will conflate MG with YA. This confusion isn’t helped by how some of the most famous and popular MG of all time (the first few Harry Potter novels) is in the same series as some of the most famous and popular YA of all time (the last few Harry Potter novels). Reviewers and booksellers sometimes mix these up, but I think most editors who publish in this space know the difference. Make sure you know whether you’re writing MG or YA, so that you can query and pitch appropriately.
Young Adult
Young adult refers to books written for the twelve- to eighteen-year-old reader, although market research estimates that 50 percent or more of YA readers are adults over the age of eighteen. Most young adult books range from 50,000 to 90,000 words, although there are certainly outliers (Twilight, for instance is around 120,000 words). YA books come in the same range of genres as adult books do, although this category also supports a wide range of coming-of-age stories: The Catcher in the Rye is the most famous coming of age tale that I can think of in the YA space, but there are also plenty of genre-specific coming-of-age stories in this space as well: Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin (fantasy); It by Stephen King (horror); Uglies by Scott Westerfeld (science fiction); or Ghost World by Daniel Clowes (a graphic novel), for a few examples.
Unlike picture books for younger children where the protagonist can be just about anyone or anything, YA novels almost universally feature a protagonist in the twelve-to-eighteen-year-old range that matches the target audience. I can’t think of a single YA book, in fact, that has an adult main character.
Young adult is a huge market, growing and thriving. This is a great space to be writing in, but be wary of being categorized as YA if you’re not writing YA. Critics, or book selling or lending platforms, occasionally slap the YA label on a book that’s not YA at all, often when it has youthful protagonists. This can divert readership, as there are plenty of adults out there who don’t enjoy reading YA at all.
YAYA
I haven’t seen or heard the term YAYA in a while, but there was a time when YAYA was used to refer to young adults writing young adult. I believe this term may have been coined to describe Christopher Paolini (of Eragon fame), who was only eighteen himself when he became a bestseller. This could also describe the early works of S.E. Hinton or Helen Oyeyemi, for example. Most YAYA authors age out into regular YA authors after a few years, or at least we hope they do.
New Adult
Last but not least, the new adult category. This term, invented by St Martin’s Press, refers to books written for the newly independent adult, someone who is in the eighteen to twenty-four range and who is living independently (perhaps in a college or dorm setting) for the first time. I suspect the need to identify and serve this market arose from the sea change over the past fifty years involving how we think of teens becoming adults. Fifty years ago, you were an adult on your eighteenth birthday and in many cases you were on your own. Today, given what we now know about the development of the prefrontal cortex as well as the vast change in the financial landscape around attending college, many people do not become independent adults in their late teens but instead in their early twenties. This genre has evolved—is evolving—to appeal to that demographic. The word count you should be targeting for a new-adult novel is arounds 50,000 to 90,000 words—same as for a young-adult novel.
Characters in NA are often newly independent adults or college students, and the themes revolve around leaving the family home, navigating college, developing romantic and sexual relationships, and perhaps even making early career choices. Notable authors in this space include Cora Carmack and Colleen Hoover, and genre authors in this category include Lev Grossman and Sarah J. Maas. Rainbow Rowell, who writes adult and young adult fiction, has also published new adult fiction.
Thanks for reading today and I hope you’ve come away with a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the landscape of books for young people, who honestly have enough going for them already, do they really need their own books? Have you seen how much energy they have? They run everywhere they go and they never sleep. Perhaps they should be writing books for us, since we are old and tired. Now that is a hot take you won’t get anywhere else. Stay tuned for next Tuesday’s article on some of the tropes I just love to hate on, which you can drop out of your writing right now to make the world a better place! Stay warm till then, friends!
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