Features in Children's Books for Different Ages

Toddlers and Babies:
- There are lots of images present in books for such a young audience, in fact, the majority of the book is pictures, hence why they are called picture books.
- There are a large amount of colours present in these books which tend to be primary colours with a lot of different contrasting colours as babies focus and get drawn in by contrasting colours. The colours also make it seem really exciting as not many other things in the world that they will have come across would be as colourful as a picture book.
- There is very little (if any) text in these types of books and if there is, it is more for the benefit of the adult which would be reading the book to the child over it being useful for the child itself. Type that is messed around with so that it isn't just blocks of text makes it more interesting for the child also as the text becomes imagery in its own right, A good example of an illustrator and writer who does this is Lauren Child who wrote and illustrated Charlie and Lola.
- Examples:
        - We're Going on a Bear Hunt
        - The Very Hungry Caterpillar
        - Freight Train (This book features many illustrations which help the children to learn the names           and a bit about the different types of trains.)



3-6 Year Old's:
- There are more words to a page with these books compared to the ones for toddlers and babies but there are still a large amount of images.
- At this age, the children may not be able to properly read or would be just learning which means that they would still have story books read to them, the images would be present to help them understand the story a bit better than listening to the adult reading it.
- The images also give children of this age time to think into what is in the images a bit more as they may instantly forget what is read to them.
- The usual layout tends to be one page of text and then one page of imagery and the pattern continues.
- Examples:
       - The Very Hungry Caterpillar (There is a slight cross over from the two ages as this book is a classic and it is read and enjoyed by ages up to about 9)
       - Green Eggs and Ham

9-11 year olds:
- There are more words than images in books for this age range as they are able to understand the text on its own without a need for referencing images for help with the storyline.
- The images in these books tend to be ones that describe what is happening in the story at that particular point rather than hosting other bits of information that isn't in the wording. A fair few of 9-11 year olds would probably be embarrassed at the thought of them reading a picture book or even a book with pictures in it.
- The images are very small in these books for this age group as they are more for decorative purposes over telling the story for those who can't read text yet.
- Examples:
          - Skellig
          - Carrie's War
          - Matilda