So far this year I have read 500 picture books.
All of these books were published in the last 5 years. I’ve also read dozens of older picture books, and 20 or so middle grade novels, but my goal this year was to focus on the recent batch of picture books.
I wanted to see what the trends and styles are in the market today. Although I have many take-aways from reading all of these books I’ll just mention the highlights.
Same or different people as Author and Illustrator:
- Separate author and illustrator: 58%
- Author/illustrators: 42%
Word counts:
- Wordless – 3%
- Under 100 – 10%
- Under 500 – 60%
- Over 800 – 25%
- Over 1000 – 18%
Main characters:
- Animals: 29%
- Humans: 59%
- Creatures: 6%
- Inanimate: 5%
- Male: 68%
- Female: 32%
- Asian: 5%
- Black: 11%
- Hispanic: 4%
- White: 76%
- Not sure: 4%
Fiction
- Fiction: 83%
- Non-fiction: 13%
- Both: 4%
Rhyme
- Rhyming: 15%
- Non-rhyme: 84%
- Both: 1%
For those of you who are interested, my 500th book was THE SNATCHABOOK by Helen Docherty and Thomas Docherty. I really enjoyed it. Great rhyme. Fun story, Great art. It reminded me a bit of one of my stories.