How to Write for Different Children’s Audiences
Children’s books range from toddlers flipping through brightly coloured board books to older teens getting ready to face the world with their favourite dog-eared novel tightly clutched. Clearly, books grow up as quickly and diversely as today’s children, so how can you make sure your children’s book idea is right for its readers?
In this post, we’ll focus on the mechanics of writing for children in terms of theme, complexity, and flow. By exploring what a book is about, the language we use to convey our ideas, and how the story is told, we can better understand what changes as a reader grows up. Note that while illustrations can play a crucial role in storytelling for children, you’ll find more information about that aspect in our guide to children’s book publishing.
Age Brackets
First, let’s begin with a quick overview of the age brackets for children’s books in the industry.
Picture Books (Ages 0–5)
Picture books include picture-heavy board books for babies (children under the age of 1) with 0–300 words, hardcover books written for toddlers (children between ages 1–3) ranging between 250–500 words, and hardcover or softcover books for preschoolers (children ages 3–5) that have up to 1,000 words.
Early Readers (Age 5–7)
Written for those aged 5–7, early reader books contain more structured blocks of text and slightly fewer illustrations. The word choices should be those that children can work through on their own. They range from 3,000–5,000 words and are filled with supplemental illustrations.
Chapter Books (Age 6–9)
Chapter books are usually around 10,000 words; however, they can occasionally range between 15,000–20,000 words. Written for children ages 6–9, these are the first category of children’s books to divide a story into chapters.
Middle Grade (Age 9–12)
Middle grade books are written for children ages 9–12, and range between 25,000–50,000 words. However, upper–middle grade books in the fantasy or sci-fi genres can sometimes range all the way up to 60,000–80,000 words.
Young Adult (Age 13+)
Written for children ages 13 and up, young adult (or YA) books generally begin around 50,000 words with a maximum of around 90,000 words, depending on the genre. Similar to middle grade books, the YA fantasy and sci-fi genres tend to have a longer word count.
For more details on these brackets, our children’s publishing guide provides some excellent examples.
People around the same age generally experience similar situations. The experiences a character goes through can therefore inform where that book fits in the market. Now that we understand the different age ranges, let’s look at how the audience’s needs change the way we deliver the story.
Theme
Adult books might have multiple or interconnected themes, but children’s books tend to focus on one main topic. Sometimes these themes can be encapsulated by tropes, like found family, chosen one, or only child. Other times, these themes hold the place of the “moral of the story,” like learning to forgive, making friends, or being wary of strangers. In short, the theme is what the story is about.
Is your theme something children of a certain age are experiencing, curious about, or struggling with? Books often teach readers about themself or the world around them, so by making a protagonist the same age as the intended readers, kids are able to identify (and sympathize) with the story.
Let’s explore a few examples.
Example 1: A story that centres around a young child learning to make friends is a situation common for children around ages 4 or 5, as they begin going to school and meeting new people. It would make the most sense to present this story as a picture book.
Example 2: If the story centres around bullying, this is an issue that’s still negatively impacting the daily lives of children of all ages. One approach is to consider when kids are given the terminology to understand, recognize, and respond to bullying behaviour. Usually, between 8 and 10 years old. This would best fit either a chapter book or middle grade book, depending on the complexity of its writing (more on that later!).
Example 3: If the story focuses on older children figuring out who they are, including the all-consuming thoughts and big feelings around sexuality and romance, this topic isn’t necessarily appropriate for a younger audience who has yet to discover this part of themselves. It’s best told through the perspective of a teenager, thereby categorizing the book as a young adult novel.
Complexity
Complexity comprises how language is used to tell a story, including reading level and sentence craft.
Reading Level
Reading level is a guideline for which words the average English speaker should learn at various stages of development — and schooling. These guidelines can be found in the Dolch or Fry sight word lists. A thesaurus can be a helpful tool to simplify language that’s too complex for your readers. But these word choices are just the beginning of complexity.
How words are placed on the page can underscore their meaning; Dr. Suess was a master of this, placing words high and low, left or right, and even colouring the words to match the colour stated. These visual aids help readers learn meaning through context.
To gauge the complexity of your sentence structures and syntax, the Flesch-Kincaid scale is the go-to resource. There are various tools out there, like the Hemingway App or ProWriting Aid, that can assess your writing and give it a grade score. For example, if we paste the opening of The House at Pooh Corner into the Hemingway app, here is how it assesses A. A. Milne’s prose:
It currently uses language suitable for a Grade 5 reader. This sample also shows, at the sentence level, those sentences that are “hard to read” — in other words, that have a high complexity. If we were to break up hard sentences into shorter chunks — for example, “It was still snowing as he stumped over the white forest track. He expected to find Piglet…” — this can lower the reading level.
Context can also be used to occasionally slip in a new and challenging word — here, “challenging” means one grade level above the audience’s current level, or two grades above in YA books. New words can even be taught explicitly through dialogue or narrative… if done deftly. Keeping a balance between comfortable vocabulary and occasional new words keeps kids engaged, passively teaching them without turning reading into a chore.
Sentence Craft
In general, the younger the reader, the shorter and simpler the sentences should be, with simple tenses and straightforward constructions. The standard simple construction in English is Article-Noun-Verb, such as, The cat jumps; or Article-Adjective-Noun-Verb-Adverb, such as, The orange cat jumps quickly. Notice how these examples use the simple present tense. Simple past tense (The cat jumped) is also acceptable, so long as you’re consistent throughout the story.
As readers get older, sentence lengths can become more varied and complex (creating rhythm — more on that later). Tenses evolve to show a sequence of events: The dog barked loudly. Now, the cat runs!
Vocabulary and themes also grow more advanced and challenging. A picture book might use the compound noun “children’s doctor” while a YA novel might use “pediatrician.” Lower middle grade books might describe concepts like grief or embarrassment through how it feels in the body, while books for older readers might call these feelings out by name.
Timelines are short for younger readers, with adventures happening over the course of an afternoon or in the space of a dream. As readers develop more object permanence, storylines can get more complex, spanning over longer stretches of time (and using more words in the process!). Middle grade books might happen over a summer or several months. YA novels might take place over a year or two, and might also begin to incorporate flashbacks, dual timelines, or unreliable narrators (characters who tell the reader a “truth” that is later proven to be a misunderstanding or just plain wrong.)
In adult books, timeline progression can be inferred by narrative clues, like months passing implied by a pregnant woman having a new baby in a later scene. For younger readers, however, it’s important to “set the scene” with phrases like: A few hours later; As the sun went down; After her baby was born… These framing details keep the reader oriented in the progression of the story.
Flow
The pacing and length of a story make up its flow. We covered the length guidelines above, so let’s focus more on the pacing here. While adults might have more patience for slower-paced texts — made slow by drier narrative styles or verbose “purple prose” — younger readers need a much steadier clip.
The first way to achieve this is to pay attention to rhythm. As mentioned in the previous section, complexity needs to remain low for our youngest age brackets, but that doesn’t mean you need to be repetitive. Consider this excellent example by Gary Provost:
Provost, Gary. 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing, Signet:1985, pp. 60–61.
On a larger scale, how you deliver your words on the page also matters. In picture books, turning the page is your opportunity to surprise, set up a joke, or create a moment of quiet. It can also be a way to build momentum. Think of The Very Hungry Caterpillar — what will he eat next?
Similar techniques can be applied to chapter breaks. Consistency is important in early reader and middle grade books, meaning each chapter is a similar length. Think of chapter breaks as waystations, easy places for readers to pause and reflect. Ideally the reading time for each chapter is anywhere from ten minutes to half an hour. In YA, the length of chapters can go longer, but if so, try to use scene breaks within the chapter to create natural places to pause. This makes it easier for a reader to estimate how long it will take them to get to the next stopping point.
By pausing the story on a question, a dramatic cliffhanger, or a snappy bit of dialogue, you can keep the reader engaged. Suspense can be as simple as wanting to know what will happen next. How will her friends react when they learn her secret? What will the villain do to stop the heroes? How will the characters get out of this mess? And then what happened?
In middle grade and YA, if you use multiple points of view (POV), try to keep them balanced. If you need to deviate from any of these guidelines, ensure it’s done intentionally for a good dramatic reason. If you have a suddenly short chapter between longer ones, it could deliver a shock or revelation that you want the reader to really absorb. If you’ve been alternating POVs and you suddenly have two chapters from the same character back-to-back, it could work if the protagonist is unconscious, so the side-kick “had” to step in and narrate what’s going on.
Pacing is a tricky one to get right, so if you’re struggling with it, try reading your work aloud (or using a text-to-speech reader). You can also send your work to beta readers and ask them if any section happens too suddenly or if any areas dragged — those are big clues that your pacing needs to be adjusted.
To recap: the younger the reader, the simpler the presentation at every level — sentence craft, reading level, flow, and word count. Try reviewing your work in progress with these techniques in mind and see if you can find ways to keep your reader turning the page — no matter their age!