To Be or Not to Be a Children's Story?

[SilverMoon]

I was jotting down the needs for a fantasy city. While making my list of butcher, baker, candle stick maker, I began putting diolouge to it and make and developed a story where a young child who lives in the clouds decides she wants to build a city for humans.

The story commences with her learning what it takes to make a good city. Buildings, climate, basic needs such as food, water.

These things are explained briefly through interaction with various adults on each seperate page.

Here's my problem. I don't write children books, so when I began researching I discovered several things I did wrong.
1. Way to long. I looked at guied lines for page length. And worked it down to 28 for words and illistrations.
The word count is almost 4k. - Way to long for a picture book, to short for chapters.

The least I can manage and still have a tellable story aprox 1500.

Looking at different age picture books, even the shortend version is better suited for older children. I used a sutibly check (4.5) Which I think would take me back to the longer story. Only it really would be suited for illistraitons.

I'd like to post for review, but I'm not sure under what. Or should I just ask for a Beta Reader?

[MsJudy]

If you want to share your work and get feedback, there's a forum called Share Your Work where you can post it. find it here:http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=76
The password is "vista."

But without even looking at the piece, I can tell you some things...

First, if you don't usually write for children or read literature for children, you really need to start there. Once you've read about twenty or thirty fantasy novels published for children in the last ten years, you will have a much better understanding of what your story needs to have in terms of length, style, tone, voice, pacing, etc.

The fantasy series that sell really well now blend a rich imagination with a modern writing style. They're fast, hip, funny, sarcastic, and full of adventure. If your story is old-fashioned in feel--Grimm's Fairytales in style, for example--you'll have a hard time finding an audience.

In terms of how to develop the story...fantasy picture books are pretty much dead in the water. Already established authors do sometimes publish a loving retell of a folktale or fairytale, but very, very, very few original fantasy PBs get made. PBs these days are for young, young children, and they tend towards the hilarious and silly. The kids who want to escape into other worlds and other times are older--at least 7 or 8--and they are ready for long, thick, well-developed stories of at least 150 pages.

So...what you probably have is the seed of something longer. If it can become a part of a 30,000+ word novel, then it probably has potential. If you don't see it growing that much, then it will probably be very hard to place in the market.

Hope this helps!

[SilverMoon]

Yes, thankyou. I went to libary to do some picture book research - my daughter is 16 now so I'm out of touch - that's how I learned I might be off base.

I plan on posting on SWY, but I thought I'd aske some advice first.

I do have a longer version in mind, though I have figured out what age range to shoot for.

[Cyia]

If you're being technical (lots of science or specifics on buildings), you might use something like The Magic School Bus as a template. It was illustrated and had 2000-3000 words per book, just with a lot of well placed words. (They weren't all in one chunk.)