The main difference between children’s picture books and early reader books is who is doing the reading.
The most important way to work out the differences is to ask:
- is the book going to be read to a child by an adult,
- or will it be read to an adult by a child?
Most commonly, picture books are read by adults to children, for example at bed time when the child is already in bed. The adult can talk about each illustration in detail (even though there are no words for these young children to focus on). Going over several pages of the book and showing the child the images or sketches on the pages will help the child recognise the illustration – the person, animal or thing.
On the other hand, early readers means exactly that – they are read by children who are learning how to read, so they can learn to recognise more words and the associated images, sketches, illustrations etc.
“Should I write a picture book or an early reader?”
The best thing about THIS question is that YOU – as the writer – get to decide 🙂
Start off by thinking about which audience are you writing for?
- small children who can’t read yet? Write picture books
- young children learning to read? Write books for early readers
There are so many wonderful books waiting to be written to fit into both of these categories.
What about the difference between the types of illustrations for picture books and early reader books?
Excellent question! And yes, you’re right – there is a difference between the illustrations for these two types of books.
For picture books:
- quite often there are no words, just pictures, so the child can look at the details, listen to the person “reading” the book to them, who is pointing out the features of the picture (for example, explaining that the elephant’s trunk is also their nose, and that some monkeys use their tails like hands to cling onto tree branches)
For early reader books:
- these illustrations might be a lot simpler, with a lot less detail, as they might be seen as enhancing the words on the page rather than being the focus
- think of it this way – the early readers can be for kids across several age groups, so the easiest readers could have more illustrations to help these young readers work out the words, while the harder-to-read books might have fewer illustrations.
So are you ready to pick one, and write, then publish? Fantastic!
At some point down the track you may decide to write one of the other type, so go right ahead – that’s fantastic too!
Whichever one you decide to start with, the main thing is TO START 🙂
Enjoy! Let me know how you’re getting on, I’d love to chat with you about your book.
Now you know the difference between children’s picture books and early reader books …
Please do let me know which one you decided to start with – feel free to reach out in one or more of these ways – I’d love to hear what you’re working on! 
- send me an email >>
- write a Comment on Facebook >>
- send a VoiceMail by clicking the button on the right side of this page.
Can’t wait to hear from you — and hopefully SEE you in an upcoming Zoom Author Chat!
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Cheerio for now,
Teena Hughes
