How picture books can compete effectively with other children’s media

In July this year I gave a COOL not CUTE themed seminar at the UKLA International Conference in Brighton. Having spent quite a lot of time putting it together I thought I’d share a transcript of it here along with the video clips and some of the slides from my presentation.

The seminar got a polarised response from the small group of delegates that attended it. While several commended me on a persuasive argument, another told me that she had disagreed with almost every word I’d said.

Click on the small slide images to see larger versions

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COOL not CUTE

How picture books can compete effectively with other children’s media

I’ve called this session COOL not CUTE which is also the title of an essay I wrote a couple of years ago about the relationship between picture book content and the literacy gender gap. Most of the points I’ll be making in this seminar can be found in Part 2 of that essay.

I’m going to set aside the gender element of the argument today and focus on the differences in content between picture books and other children’s media. I think these differences are helping to drive children of both sexes away from books and towards TV, films and video games at a very early age.

I’m a children’s author and most of my books are picture books. I’ve been working in the publishing industry for 15 years. During that time I’ve had picture books published by 11 different publishers, so I’ve a fairly broad experience in picture book publishing.

I try to write picture books that appeal to a wide range of tastes. There’s no question that we publish a great many picture books in this country that a great many children find appealing. But there are also a lot of children that don’t find picture books appealing. And it’s those children I want to talk about today.

Research shows that a growing number of children regard reading as as “uncool”. Here's a couple of quotes from the Literacy Trust web site.

First impressions are important – and the first books most children encounter are picture books. I think the picture book industry’s current standards of age-appropriateness are a lot more conservative than those of children’s films, TV and video games. As a consequence a lot of the content that children regard as “cool” that’s found in these other media is missing from picture books. I’m going to highlight some of this missing content and offer an explanation for these differing standards of age appropriateness.

Picture books are read by a wide age range; they are read TO children who are only a few months old and read BY children up to the age of seven or eight.

The nub of the problem is that standards of age appropriateness that are suitable for preschool children are routinely applied to all picture books, including those read by school age children.

Four is the age that most children start school in the UK. I think we need to recognise four as a watershed age for picture book content and I'm going to be focussing on the sort of content that's age appropriate for four years and over.

Four years and over is also the age range that the BBFC has in mind when assessing the age-appropriateness of U certificate media. As well as films, the BBFC certify children’s TV shows when they’re released as DVDs or downloads. There’s now a separate certification body, PEGI, for video games, that operates on similar lines.

While I think it would be unreasonable to compare picture books with anything other than U certificate media, it’s worth pointing out that many picture-book-age children are watching PG and even 12 certificate media.

There are many differences between the content of picture books and other children’s media, but I’m going to focus on four elements today – COMBAT, PERIL, VILLAINY and TECHNOLOGY.

All four of these elements are abundant in films, TV shows and video games watched or played by many four-year-olds, but are comparatively rare in picture books. I’ll illustrate this missing content with examples from four U certificate films.

All 4 of these films were the most popular U certificates in the year they were released. 3 of them were THE most popular film of any certificate in the year they were released. So they are all very mainstream examples. The last 3 films we'll look at were all released in the last 10 years, but I’m going to start with a film that was released 36 years ago.


Between the ages of 4 and 7 my son and most of his friends were obsessed with Star Wars. The original Star Wars film contains an abundance of peril, villainy & technology, but I’m going to use it to remind you of the sort of combat the BBFC deems age-appropriate for a four-year-old viewer.

There are about 20 minutes of combat in the film. I’m going to show you just 60 seconds taken from various scenes. This sort of content would be considered “cool” by many young children. As you watch this I want you to think about how often those children are likely to find similar content in picture books.

That film is 36 years old, but I could have shown you similar clips from U certificate films and TV TV shows that are showing in cinemas and on children’s television this weekend.

When I saw how enthusiastic my 4 year-old son was about these films I thought I’d try to channel some of that enthusiasm into reading by finding picture books that contained similar content – but there weren’t any. That was 14 years ago and there are still very few. And yet Star Wars is as popular as ever with young children and Disney have just begun making a new series of Star Wars films.

I mentioned this disparity to a picture book publisher last year and she told me that – despite it’s U certificate – she would not let a 4-year-old child watch a film like Star Wars. This attitude is not uncommon within children’s publishing. I think that one of the assumptions underlying it is that “depictions of combat in children’s media could make children more aggressive.” I’ll come back and address that assumption later.

I’m going to use a clip from Toy Story 3 to illustrate how peril is often depicted in children's films and television. The poster describes this film as a comedy and it is very funny in places, but it also contains scenes of peril that are played absolutely straight. I’m going to show you a particularly intense example. To put this clip in context: it comes at the end of a 20 minute sequence which starts with the toys breaking out of a kindergarten that’s run like a prison camp for toys. Throughout the sequence the characters narrowly escape from a series of increasingly perilous situations. As the clip starts, they’re in a rubbish dump and have just avoided being torn apart by a mechanical shredder.

I think you can see that that’s a genuinely scary moment. Young viewers are left in no doubt that the characters are facing what seems like certain destruction.

There’s a very fine line between what’s thrilling and what's upsetting for a four-year-old. Filmmakers like Pixar are very adept at judging exactly where that line lies, so that they can thrill young viewers by taking them very close to it without crossing over. In my experience, most picture book publishers prefer to play safe and to keep well away from that line. Scary scenes like the one we’ve just watched are relatively rare in picture books and I think that’s one of the things that gives many young children the impression that books are less cool than other children's media.

And that’s a shame because I think picture books are the ideal medium for presenting scary content, since they’re often read to children, particularly younger children, by an adult who's able to moderate the storytelling experience. If an adult comes across a scary scene, such as the one we've just seen, while reading to a child, the adult can say “this is scary” to let the child know that they’re not alone in there fears. And they can ask the child questions like, “Do you think they will be rescued?” to help the child anticipate a positive outcome. And yet children are far more likely to encounter content like that on a screen, than on a picture book page.

The next content element I’m going to highlight is villainy – to be more precise it’s irredeemable villainy. There are plenty of villains in picture books, but they tend to be relatively tame compared with the deadly villains children frequently encounter in other media. And very often picture book villains are obliged to see the error of their ways and redeem themselves by the end of the story. Picture book villains rarely meet a sticky end in the way they do in film or television.

The Incredibles is another film that has all four of the content elements I'm highlighting today. The villain in The Incredibles is called Syndrome. I’m going to show you two short clips. The first illustrates that not only is Syndrome a deadly villain, but that he has no qualms about killing children – something which is very rare in picture book villains. And the second shows him meeting a sticky end.

Again, as you’re watching this, I want you to think about how often a young child that thinks this sort of content is cool would come across scenes like these in a picture book.

I think one reason a lot of publishers are averse to including intense irredeemable villainy in picture books is that they are worried that “depictions of villainy in children’s media could make children more immoral.” That’s another assumption that I’m going to address a little later.

The final content element I want to look at is technology. This is a bit different from the other 3 elements we’ve looked at in that there’s no ethical aspect. But technology has a high cool factor for a lot of children and there’s a big difference between the way technology is commonly depicted in picture books and in other children’s media. I think that difference also reflects differing standards of age appropriateness.

Technology has a prominent role in many popular children’s films, TV shows and video games. Star Wars is brimming with sophisticated technology — spacecraft, vehicles, robots, weaponry — but I thought I’d bring things right up to date and looked at some of the technology from Despicable Me 2, which was THE most popular film at UK cinemas last year.



There are picture books that feature technology, but they tend to represent technology in a simplified way. You rarely see the attention to technical detail that you see in a Star Wars spacecraft or a Despicable Me gadget and technology tends to be less prominently presented in picture books. And it’s not just about visual detail, technical language, even simple words like “piston” are often deemed age-inappropriate for picture book texts.


So why are these four content elements, which are abundant in children films and TV shows, rare in picture books? The first reason is very straightforward – rejection. Many publishers don’t regard this content as appealing or age-appropriate for picture book readers.

The other thing that happens is “Bunnification”. This is a phrase I’ve borrowed from an illustrator who used it to describe how the scary, dangerous, technologically-sophisticated content found in children’s films and TV is often made safer, simpler, cuter or more whimsical for inclusion in picture books. While the cute, whimsical aliens and spacecraft found in books like Aliens Love Underpants are very popular with many young readers, they may seem tame and babyish to a child that prefers the more sophisticated aliens and spacecraft found in films like Star Wars.

There are some exceptions: my 4-year-old son would have adored Jonny Duddle's The King of Space had it been published a decade or two earlier, but picture books like this are still relatively few and far between.

If we want to create picture books that can match the mainstream appeal of the films we've looked at today, we have to be prepared to “cut out the cute”. While many publishers see cuteness as adding to a picture book’s appeal, many children see cuteness as making a book more babyish and uncool. We have to stop using “cute” as a default setting for picture books.


Before we go any further I’m going to address those two assumptions I mentioned that explain why many people are averse to including combat and irredeemable villainy in picture books. I’ve combined them into this statement:

“Depictions of combat and villainy in children’s media will make children more aggressive and immoral!”

So how does the BBFC justify the inclusion of combat and villainy in U certificate children's films and TV shows? This quote from the BBFC’s web site explains their approach:

“‘U’ films should be set within a positive moral framework and should offer reassuring counterbalances to any violence, threat or horror”. 

Essentially what they’re saying is that this sort of content is OK for four-year-olds, providing it’s carefully framed. Is that true? Or is this content likely to have a detrimental effect no matter how carefully it’s presented?  I’m a picture book author - I’m not qualified to answer that question, but I have a friend who is …

Claire Laurence is a psychologist at the University of Nottingham who specialises in the study of aggression and specifically in the factors that trigger aggression. When I first started looking at this content issue a couple of years ago, Claire helped me to write an essay called NATURE and NURTURE. The first two thirds of that essay is about sex differences in children’s preferences. But the last third deals with this question of whether or not depictions of combat and villainy in children’s media are likely to encourage aggressive, immoral behaviour in children.

Claire explained that it depends on how these depictions are framed. There is a lot of evidence that depictions of aggression that encourage the individual to identify with the aggressor, where aggressive behaviour is rewarded or depicted in a positive way can have a priming effect. For example, first person shoot-em-up video games, where aggressive behaviour earns higher scores have been shown to increase aggressive tendencies.

On the other hand, depictions of aggression that encourage the individual to identify with the victim, where aggressive behaviour is penalised or depicted in a negative way can have an inhibiting effect. And that’s why Claire felt that the BBFC approach to depictions of combat and violence in U certificate media was not only reasonable, but could be beneficial. While this distinction is widely recognised in other media, it’s not widely recognised in picture books which tend to avoid depictions of aggression altogether.


So why do picture books have differing standards of age-appropriateness to films and television? Age-appropriateness is a subjective judgement and I think these differences reflect who is making that judgement.

In the case of films and television, age appropriateness is determined by the BBFC who carry out public consultations every five years to ensure that their judgement reflects the view of the UK population as a whole. As well as consulting existing filmgoers, they carry out a "General Public Sample". As a statutory body, the BBFC is obliged to ensure that these consultations are demographically representative of gender, race, age, social class and regional differences in the UK population.

The age appropriateness of picture book content is largely determined by publishers. And while publishers' judgements are also informed by market research, that research tends to be based on the existing picture book market which is not demographically representative of the population as a whole.

As such, the standards of age appropriateness used in picture books tend to reflect the judgement of a narrower demographic. Both picture book publishers and picture book buyers are predominately white, predominately middle class and – and this is bit I usually get into trouble for - predominately female. The vast majority of picture book publishers and picture book buyers are women and I think that’s why a lot of the missing content I've highlighted today typically appeals to boys more than girls.

If we want every child in every home to engage with books from an early age, picture books need to follow the BBFC's example and adopt standards of age appropriateness that reflect the judgement of the population as a whole.

I started this seminar with these quotes about how children are increasingly embarrassed to be seen reading. As I said then, first impressions are important. I think conservative standards of age appropriateness in picture books are giving many children the impression that books are a safe, tame, uncool alternative to other media.

Obviously one size does not fit all. Every child is different and there are many children that won’t find the sort of content I’ve highlighted appealing.

I’m not arguing that we need this sort of content in ALL picture books! I am arguing that we need this sort of content in some picture books, if we want picture books to appeal to ALL children.

If we want all children to recognise that reading can be cool, we need many more picture books that are COOL and NOT CUTE!

UKLA Conference Seminar

I’m presenting a COOL not CUTE seminar at this year’s UKLA International Conference which is being held at the University of Sussex from Friday 4th to Sunday 6th July.

My seminar is on Saturday 5th July at 14:00 in room 135 (session I7) . The session is only 40 minutes long, so I’m setting gender issues aside and just focusing on the differences in content between picture books and other children’s media which I think are helping to drive many children away from books at an early age.

Here’s the outline for my session from the conference brochure:

COOL not CUTE: How picture books can compete more effectively with other children’s media 

The National Literacy Trust’s ‘Children's and Young People's Reading in 2012’ report (published October 2013) shows that a growing number of children see reading as an ‘uncool’ activity,“are increasingly embarrassed to be seen reading” and are spending less of their own time with books. Conversely, children are spending more time with electronic media such as television and video games.

For many children the perception that books are not as ‘cool’ as other media will have more to do with content than the media itself. First impressions are important – and the first books most children encounter are picture books.

This session will examine the way in which ‘cool’ content elements such as combat, technology, villainy and peril are represented in popular U certificate children’s media and contrast this with the relatively tame way in which these elements are usually represented in picture books.

The more liberal standards of age appropriateness evident in U certificate children’s media are based on demographically representative research. This session will argue that if picture books reflected similar standards of age appropriateness, they would appeal to a wider, more diverse readership and be able to compete more effectively with other children’s media.

I’ll be arguing that the standards of age appropriateness used in picture books are a lot more conservative
than those used in other age-appropriate children’s media including popular U certificate films.

It’s the first time I’ve been to the conference, so I’m not sure what to expect! If you’re attending yourself, please come along and say hello. There will be time for a 10 minute Q and A session after the seminar, but do get in touch if you’d like to get together for a longer chat.

Find out more about the conference on the UKLA web site

Download a conference flyer & booking form

Why dads need to buy more picture books

This post was originally published on the New Statesman's Cultural Capital blog

Dads don't just need to read to their kids – they
need to start buying more picture books as well.

Books aren’t cool — or so a growing number of children seem to think. A report just published by the National Literacy Trust reveals "children are spending less of their own time reading and are increasingly embarrassed to be seen reading". According to the report, "children who do not think 'reading is cool' are four times more likely to be below average readers". I think the perception that books aren’t cool has more to do with book content than the act of reading. Specifically, it has to do with the first books most children encounter, which are picture books.

When my son was four years old, he and his friends were obsessed with Star Wars, a saga of good versus evil, packed with deadly combat, sophisticated technology, murderous villains and threatening predicaments. The Star Wars films available at the time were all U certificates, showing that — in the BBFC’s judgment — their content was appropriate for four-year-olds. Such content is rarely found in the cosier, cuter world of picture books. Picture books tend to steer well clear of deadly combat, technology is often simply represented, murderous villains are almost nonexistent and threatening predicaments are few and far between. Small wonder then that many children that relish this sort of “cool” content decide that books aren’t for them and turn to other media that reflect their tastes. For such children, the reading habit is broken before it’s barely begun.

The majority of the "below average readers" referred to in the Literacy Trust report are boys. The report shows that “nearly twice as many boys as girls say that they don’t enjoy reading at all” and “twice as many boys as girls say that they never read outside of class”. And it’s no coincidence that the type of cool content that’s absent from picture books typically appeals to boys.

In a previous piece for the New Statesman's Cultural Capital blog, I highlighted the fact that that most of the gatekeepers in the world of picture books — commissioning editors, infant teachers, children’s librarians, reviewers – are women. However the picture book industry, like any other industry, is subject to the rule of supply and demand and the most influential gatekeepers are consumers. The overwhelming majority of picture books are bought by women, consequently the picture book market reflects female-typical tastes far more than male-typical ones. Even picture books that are intended to appeal to boys partially reflect the tastes of the mother or grandmother that will usually purchase them. This won't change unless fathers and grandfathers start buying more picture books.

The Literacy Trust’s report was published to coincide with the launch of its “Literacy Heroes” campaign celebrating people who inspire a love of books. Dads are always being encouraged to read more to their children at bedtimes; I’d like to encourage dads to go one step further and commit another small act of literacy heroism by going into a bookshop and choosing a really cool picture book to read to their kids.

Have I got this the wrong way around? Publishers responses to COOL not CUTE!

In my last blog post I outlined some of the feedback I’d received from various groups in response to my essay COOL not CUTE. The one group I didn’t cover in that post was picture book publishers as I wanted to address their feedback in this separate post.

I wrote to all the picture book publishers I’ve worked with recently to let them know I was publishing the essay and have heard back from most of them. Most of the publishers that responded acknowledged that the issue was worthy of debate but defended the picture book industry’s current output. Most of them did so by making one or more of the following points.

1. Many picture books currently being published appeal universally to both boys and girls.

I don’t dispute this point and acknowledged it on page 8 of the essay where I wrote that “there are a great many picture books published each year that have genuine cross-gender appeal” and mentioned the collaborations of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler as excellent examples. As I wrote in the essay, my argument relates to the “relative numbers and content of picture books that principally appeal, intentionally or unintentionally, specifically to boys or girls.”

2. Many picture books are published each year with themes with boy-typical appeal such as aliens, dinosaurs, monsters, diggers and pirates.

While these picture books have themes that appeal to boys, my argument is about the ingredients that are used within these themes such as combat or villainy. Many boy-friendly ingredients excluded from picture books are commonly found in similarly-themed films and TV programmes suitable for children of picture book age.

For instance, one picture book theme that’s particularly appealing to boys is pirates. In 2012 Aardman released a U certificate film called The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! which includes all of the Missing Ingredients listed in Part 2 of COOL not CUTE. Here are some specific examples:

Combat: Characters are seen fighting with cutlasses, firing pistols and canons and hitting each other with various objects such as frying pans. The violence in the film is generally non-lethal, but one running joke involves a pirate, Cutlass Liz, killing other pirates by running them through with her sword.

Peril: Characters repeatedly find themselves in life-threatening situations and at one point the hero is almost beheaded by an executioner.

Irredeemable Villainy: The film’s villain is an evil, sabre-wielding incarnation of Queen Victoria, who’s last seen swearing vengeance on the hero.

Although many pirate-themed picture books have been published over the last few years, very few of them contain dangerous, exciting ingredients such as these. I accept that some four-year-old boys will find these ingredients unappealing and I’m not arguing that ALL picture books should include them; but in addition to tamer, cuter picture books about pirates, aliens, dinosaurs, diggers and monsters, there need to be many more wilder, cooler picture books for the children of both sexes who are currently rejecting books in favour of films and TV shows which cater to their tastes.


3. Films and TV shows may have different standards of age-appropriateness to picture books, but that’s because picture books have higher standards.

I’ve suggested that the standards of age-appropriateness applied to picture books should match those of films and TV programmes certificated as age-appropriate for picture book age children. However, some picture book publishers I’ve spoken to in the last few weeks have told me that they would not allow a four-year-old child to watch films such as Star Wars IV: A New Hope or The Incredibles, despite the U certificate indicating that the content of both these films is age-appropriate.

I’ve been using films and TV shows as a measuring stick to judge picture books against. Should it be the other way around? Is it TV and films that are getting it wrong?

The main reason I think it’s reasonable to use film and TV age standards as a measuring stick is that they are judged in a far more impartial manner. TV shows and films have their age-appropriateness assessed by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), an independent organisation that has a statutory responsibility to make such assessments.

To ensure that its judgements reflects public attitudes, the BBFC commissions regular public consultations and revises its guidelines accordingly. A report on the last consultation, comprising of 8700 interviews, can be found here on the BBFC web site. An appendix on page 79 of the report outlines the methods that were used to obtain a demographically diverse sample that represents the public as a whole.

I think this demographic diversity of views, including an equal representation of both sexes, goes a long way towards explaining the differing standards of age-appropriateness between films/TV and picture books. I think the more restrictive standards of age-appropriateness evident in picture books reflect the views of a far narrower demographic, and one that I’ve argued in COOL not CUTE is overwhelmingly female.



What do you think?
Are there any flaws in my arguments?

Have I misrepresented the counter-arguments?

Have I omitted an important counter-argument?

If so, let me know and join the debate using the comments box/link below!

If the Tables were Turned - Hollywood and the Bechdel Test

In an early draft of COOL not CUTE, the section headed The Uneven Playing Field included the following paragraph about the Hollywood film industry

It’s not unusual for an industry to have a gender bias in its output. It’s often asserted that the Hollywood film industry is biased towards producing films that appeal to men and boys more than women and girls. This assertion is supported by the small number of Hollywood films that pass the Bechdel Test⁠. This bias is usually attributed to the overwhelming dominance of men in the industry, particularly among those responsible for commissioning films. The male-bias in the industry is characterised in the comments of one script-writing student who claims that she was told by her professors that the audience "only wanted white, straight, male leads" and not, as she quotes a male industry professional as saying, "a bunch of women talking about whatever it is women talk about."⁠

Having made this comparison, I felt obliged to spend several paragraphs qualifying it. I acknowledged that, while there were very few men in commissioning positions in the picture book Industry, there were many men, such as myself, writing and illustrating picture books. That while it’s sometimes claimed that the predominance of men in the Hollywood film industry is as a result of anti-female employment discrimination, I’m not aware of any anti-male employment discrimination in the picture book industry. And that, unlike Hollywood, the picture book industry generally recognises it has a responsibility to produce material that will appeal to both boys and girls.

An editor that read this draft persuaded me to cut this passage on the grounds that, while the comparison had some relevance, by spending so much time qualifying it I risked distracting readers from my essay's main argument.

In my second essay NATURE and NURTURE, in the section headed If the Tables were Turned, I considered what the picture book industry’s output might be like if it was dominated by men instead of women and concluded that “girls would be getting a far rawer deal than boys currently are.” The conspicuously male-centric output of the male-dominated Hollywood film industry would seem to support this opinion.

However, while the degree of gender bias in the picture book industry is relatively minor in comparison to that of Hollywood, I think its consequences may be more serious. The picture book industry holds a more responsible role than the Hollywood film industry as the advantages of being literate are far greater than the advantages of being cineliterate. As I stated in the conclusion to Part 1 of COOL not CUTE, “literacy is an essential life skill, fundamental to an individual’s ability to access and understand information and communicate effectively. So reflecting the reading preferences of one sex more than another is arguably an equal opportunities issue.”