PB1- The children

As simple as they sound “children’s books” (6 and under) uses conventions to gain the attention of one of the simplest yet most complicated audience. It seems as if you give a children any item they will be mesmerized by it and even might try eating it. However, books are not as appealing to them as a lollipop.   Children’s books’ effectiveness relies on bright and captivating images that go along with the text, simple words with rhythmic flow, repetition, and hands on participation with the book.

To start off with why children’s book’s do have the complexity they do is because it is said that the first couple years of age are the most important and the more words a children hears the larger word bank is stored in his/her brain. So what do we do to captivate the attention of children who seems to be interested in just everything? As we saw with Dr. Seuss a children’s book is full with rhyme. Yes it sounds nice and cool but why is it that so much rhyme is used? Well, children are unfamiliar with words at a young age and so by using rhyme the children is repeatedly put this word “hat” and “cat” in his head and of course when someone is exposed to something repeatedly they seem to learn it.

Along with this rhyme we often see a very visual image come alongside the words of the book. This is because as you follow the words of the book there is also a picture to go along with what’s being said. Although it was a long time ago there was a point in our life where we simply did not know what words meant and so with a picture of a hat right next to the word “hat” a connection could be made that a “hat” is something you where on your head. Another convention used in children’s books is using the sense touch. We see these in animal books, which introduce animals to children by having a pop up box that you open, and under it is “animal’s fur” that you could touch. This is also an effective way to get a children’s attention because it first uses something most children are familiar with- this “hide and go seek” idea with an animal being under a box and second by having something a children could touch because we all know how touchy children are.

The genre of “Children’s Books” too has many complex conventions used to capture the minds of our youngest audience. As children we were captivated to a book more than just because there existed green eggs and ham but because the author knows exactly what do given his audience.