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.