PICTURE BOOKS: Editors and designers play a huge role behind the scenes of a picture book, influencing the size, shape and style of the book once the text is passed. Typefaces, if chosen well, can set the atmosphere of the book, while the cover image introduces it to the reader for the first time, writes Niamh Sharkey
The illustrator works in tandem with the designer - I like to play a very active role, selecting typefaces and deciding on the overall look and feel of the book. For my new book, a typeface is being created from my handwriting - a feat in itself, as a special program must be written so that the text can be translated into different languages.
Children, when reading picture books, apply a keen understanding of visual language. They understand the language of colour. They read the shape and style of typography, and they appreciate its effect. At workshops, I am constantly amazed by how clued-in children are to the design elements of a picture book.
With this in mind, I come to Jez Alborough's Captain Duck (HarperCollins, £9.99). This is the third in a series about Alborough's character, Duck. The first spread opens on three images, much like a comic strip, the centre image being split across the page fold. Here, a weakness in the layout of the text has the potential to cause confusion. I automatically read from left to right with the following result: "It's good I stopped he uses petrol/near my friend Goat in his boat." The text should read: "It's good I stopped near my friend Goat/he uses petrol in his boat". This design flaw is repeated a number of times in the book.
The Smartest Giant in Town is a delicious book (Macmillan, £9.99). Clearly, Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler make a great picture book team. This book follows up Room on the Broom and The Gruffalo. In a new shop selling giant clothes, the scruffiest giant in town togs himself out from head to toe in a smart new outfit. On his way home he meets some animals that need his help . . . and his clothes! Scheffler's illustrations have a real strength of colour; his wide-eyed characters wander entertainingly through his fairy tale world.
Sink your teeth into Sara Fanelli's Mythological Monsters of Ancient Greece (Walker Books, £10.99). It's a multi-layered creation with elements of collage, such as hand-drawn text, painterly people and teeny photocopies. Fanelli transports us to Ancient Greece, where we meet, among others, monstrous Medusa the Gorgon and Minotaur, half-man half-bull. I recommend this book for six- to 10-year-olds. Fanelli continues to seek new ways of combining text and images, frequently copied but never equalled. Not for the faint-hearted.
If your little reader is learning to count, they will enjoy Carlo Likes Counting by Jessica Spanyol (Walker Books, £10.99). Bold black outlines, simple characters and friendly design make spending the day with baby giraffe Carlo fun. I spent an enjoyable hour counting the legs on a green octopus with my one-year-old, Megan.
After a morning with Carlo, spend the afternoon with Mimi, a mischievous monkey. Mimi's Book of Opposites by Emma Chichester Clark (Andersen Press, £5.99), with its tough laminated pages, makes a good sturdy read and will stand up to rough handling - being thrown up, and down, being wet, and dry . . . A little gem of a book.
Loving something means that sometimes you have to decide what is really best for it, no matter how difficult that can be. Fans of Patrick Benson will enjoy Mole and the Baby Bird (Bloomsbury, £9.99). Marjorie Newman's text works in gentle harmony with Benson's delicate pen, ink and watercolour washes. Elegant design and beautiful use of white space help to capture the emotions of this story.
Lynley Dodd's Scarface Claw is full of high spirits (Puffin Books, £9.99). Big, bullying tomcat Scarface Claw is at the centre of this tale. Like most bullies, he turns out to be not quite as tough as he and the other animals thought. He is scared by his own reflection! Small books are great for small hands, and Dodd's scratchy ink drawings work wonderfully in this format. The only drawback is that you don't get much book for your money: it's half the size of all the other books reviewed.
A book that you could go back to again and again is Ted Dewan's Crispin and the Three Little Piglets (Doubleday, £10.99). Dewan pokes fun at childhood consumerism in a cheeky way. This book offers so much - a good story, intelligent handing of sibling rivalry - and Dewan is a fantastic painter. To top it all off, the book is also well designed. Designer Ian Butterworth even gets a credit on the title page!
It's the combination of text, pictures and good design that makes for tasty books. Books with covers that lure you in, books that wrap you up in their endpapers and steal you away to their world from which you emerge brimming with enthusiasm and ready for more!
Niamh Sharkey is a children's book illustrator