Language

I decided to look at how language is used in children's books. I wanted to know what was appropriate for my chosen target audience and how it would help me to successfully communicate the narrative of the book. I looked at books by Chris Haughton and Jon Klassen.

 

Both of the books I looked at use very simple language and sentence structure, often using repetition to reinforce key aspects of the narrative. the text often forms a kind of rhythm that the book follows. In both cases the text is bold on the page and stands out clearly. The two artists have taken very different approaches to how they layout their pages. Jon Klassen places the text on the opposite page to the illustrations or in some of his work separated by on a band of white at the edge of an otherwise fill bleed illustration. This allows his compositions to be unaffected by the introduction of the text. Chris Haughton uses the text as part of his illustrations. I think this is so that he can clearly illustrate which character is saying what and create a closer relationship between the words and the actions of the characters. His work draws you into the scene and having the text separate could be detrimental to this effect.