After thinking more about my target audience which is going to be between 4 and 8, I realised that I needed to understand how children that age learn and what they like about books.

http://usabilitynews.org/which-fonts-do-children-prefer-to-read-online/

http://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fyti/situational-typography/typography-for-children

This website says how children learn letter by letter with each word, so have friendly and warm fonts which have a lot of letter spacing. Children learning to read also tend to read the first line then jump to a different line so making the size right will be key.

With headlines and titles this is an opportunity to play around with the colour, size and layout of it which makes the children want to read it and enjoy the book more.

http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/family/az1036.html

I found this page really interesting about how children learn with everything such as emotional or mental development with work. Its slightly harder to be able to get children aged 8 to want to read a book which also needs to aim towards 4 year olds as they will have a lower attention span and vocabulary only expands to about 2,000 words. Whereas a 6 year old starts to actually write and a 8 year old will have a attention span of about 20 minutes and understands numeracy and the value of money.

The emotional development is that at 4 years old understand the security with an adult is not around and can become frustrated which may lead back to infant behaviours such as; thumb sucking. At the age of 6 more realistic fears change from ghosts to fears revolving around school, friendships and family.

After reading about all of this and how the child learns I start to think about the layout more and the font in the book.

My book is about adoption so I wanted to take a look at some facts that revolve around my target audience.

I found a brilliant website that has lots of facts about children in the United Kingdom,

http://www.adoptionuk.org/press-media/adoption-facts-and-figures

Some facts include;

Looked after children

There were 69,540 looked after children on 31 March 2015, compared to 68,800 in 2014.

Of these:

• The majority of looked after children (61%) are looked after by the state due to abuse or neglect.
• The majority of children (73%) are from a White British background.
• 52,050 (75%) were in a foster placement.
• 5% of the children looked after were under the age of 1.

Adoptions from Care

There were 5,330 looked after children adopted during the year ending 31 March 2015, an increase of 5% between 2014 and 2015.

Gender

53% (2,800) of children adopted during the year ending 31st March 2015 were boys and 47% (2,530) were girls.

Age

• 4% (230) of children adopted during the year ending 31st March 2015 were under 1 year old.
• 76% (4,050) were aged between 1 and 4 years old.
• 19% (990) were aged between 5 and 9 years old.
• 1% (60) were aged between 10 and 15 years old.
• None were aged 16 and over (to nearest 10).

Ethnicity

• 83% (4,400) of looked after children adopted during the year ending 31st March 2015 were white.
• 11% (580) were of mixed racial background.
• 2% (120) were Black or Black British.
• 2% (90) were Asian or Asian British.
• 1% (50) were from other ethnic groups.
• 2% (100) were other (refused or information not yet available).

Siblings adopted

1,930 (36%) of the 5,330 children adopted during 2014-15 were part of a sibling group.

Adopters

91% (350) of adoptions during the year ending 31st March 2015 were by couples and 8% (30) were by single adopters. 8% (30) of all adoptions during the year ending 31st March 2015 were by same sex couples.

From the start the one main worry I had was drawing, I am not very good so I wanted to look at simple drawings of animals for ideas and this is what I found.

 Mrs Rabbit

 Ali

 Kat

Ellie

I love all of these simple drawings of the animals I will be using, so I just need to start getting to grips with photoshop.

I also thought about looking at anime drawings as it maybe easier to draw the animals,

As time went on and I was looking at trying to find a simple way to draw the animals but make them still look like the animal. I came across a brilliant idea to have the animals all square and started to look for some images.

After seeing this it made me think that I could have a story with just something different on the character such a a guitar changes the whole scene.

I remember seeing these pusheen cats on FaceBook messenger and is similar to the square animals but have a little character about them by having something like some glasses on there face to make them look funny.

I lastly came across these little guys who all have the same look about them but are all completely different animals.

So my final idea with the animals is to create animals like the picture above and just add little accessories such as a car or bed with the background.

I started to look at what type of fonts children would enjoy and want to read, I found this website which actually gave a lot of detail about how children enjoy warm and a friendly design.

http://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fyti/situational-typography/typography-for-children

So from this I tried to find different fonts for my book design, and found this font called “Coming Soon”.

http://www.1001fonts.com/coming-soon-font.html

After being told that we need to think of ideas for our new project being the book for children.

I thought about doing something like adoption, seen as my little brother is fostered and lives with us until he is 21 and he has lots of siblings some older and some younger. The younger ones all got adopted and he doesn’t see them and he finds it very hard to understand or deal with. So this gave me an idea to create a book for children his age (12) or even younger to understand.

My first thought was to maybe use animals instead of humans as children tend to understand and enjoy books more if its about animals. I started to think of which animal to use and remember that pandas are often abandon by there mother so children can relate, also pandas are pretty cute.

Research on Pandas!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/08/26/why-panda-mothers-abandon-their-babies/

http://www.chinahighlights.com/giant-panda/life-cycle.htm

When a panda is first born they are helpless and need taking care of for a few months, they start to crawl around 3 months and around 4 months can run and take a few steps, around 1.5/2 they tend to leave there mothers at there decision.

https://visuallens.wordpress.com/2007/11/02/mother-panda-is-able-to-care-for-only-one-of-her-cubswhy/

The main reason that pandas don’t look after two babies is because baby pandas need so much attention when they are born so the mother picks which one she wants and normally after birth the other babies will die. Another known fact is that the father has nothing to do with the raising of a baby at any point.

http://animals.mom.me/animals-mothers-abandon-after-birth-9940.html

I started to look for drawings of pandas to get an understanding of them and draw up some ideas of how I could like the characters to look for my story.

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/katie-yoder/2015/03/25/childrens-book-about-abortion-my-sister-happy-ghost

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3052487-get-well-soon

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/727327.No_Matter_What

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22524161-happy-pants—why-is-mummy-so-sad

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25268250-calm-clever-and-carefree-a-kid-s-guide-to-understanding-anxiety

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/136949.Sometimes_My_Mommy_Gets_Angry