Dom Midgley

Children’s Book Research

The Selfish Crocodile

Author: Faustin CharlesIllustrator: Michael TerryPublisher: Bloomsbury Children’s BooksPublishing Date: 01-06-1998Book Dimensions: 27.3 x 0.6 x 19.1 cm# of pages : 32 (24 pages of the story)

The illustrations take up the whole space on every page, making it a lot more eye catching for the young children reading it. The illustrations are in great detail, and its looks as if they have been hand drawn and scanned in, possibly with some extra detail and colour added in post production.

The fonts used are serif, to make it easier for the children to read along the page. The sentences are limited to one to three sentences on each page in the blank space of the page, so as not to distract to the readers from the illustrations.The Lion Who Wanted To Love

Author: Giles Andreae

Dom Midgley

Illustrator: David WojtwyczPublisher: Orchard PicturebooksPublishing Date: 29-04-1999Book Dimensions: 23.9 x 0.3 x 30.4 cm# of pages: 32

The illustrations take up all the pages in this book, leaving no white space and making all the vibrant colours used stand out. The illustrations look fairly simple, clearly hand drawn. Interestingly, each of the characters and some of the more prominent surroundings are outlined with a white border. This could be because the characters were drawn separately to the background, so the white border separates the two elements, making the characters more contrasting and eye catching.

The book is written in verse, with each verse being written with the poetic structure ABCB. Each two page spread has one to two verses on each. The font is subtly serif and simple, so children reading it would be able to learn the words quicker, and hopefully in turn would be able to learn to read and write quicker.

Is There Room On The Bus?

Author: Helen Piers

Dom Midgley

Illustrator: Hannah GiffardPublisher: Frances Lincoln Children's BooksPublishing Date: 06-03-1997Book Dimensions: 21.5 x 27 x 0.6 cm# of pages: 36 (30 pages of the story)

The illustrations in this book take up the majority of the pages, with borders around and some white space around those. The text is put in different places across the pages; sometimes its in some white space within the borders, sometimes outside the border, and sometimes within the illustrations themselves. The text is sarif, and fairly short and bold, making it super easy for children to read.

The language used is very simple, short sentences, with only two to six sentences per two-page spread. The book contains a lot of alliteration, to make the words easy to remember for kids. “1 lonely lion”, “2 cross cows”, it also helps kids remember numbers