Table of Contents
Children’s Books
There are two forms of children’s books: Picture Books and Illustrated Books. The formatting and Alt-text for these types of books are slightly different than others. This section will show you how format these books, as well as tips and examples of image descriptions.
Picture Books
Picture books are books were there are more images than text. Often the text will be part of the image itself, so we have developed a way to describe this book for conversion. Though these are mainly children’s books, sometimes you will have other reading level books that are heavily illustrated. With children’s books, most of the time, they do not have tables of contents or chapter headings, and their text is usually part of an image, or they are image-heavy.
If the book you are working on is image-based (i.e. the text is part of the image), then you will need to transcribe the text above the image. You will also need to create headings, and add a producer’s note at the beginning of the book stating why you did so.
Illustrated Books
Illustrated books are children’s book for a higher reading level, and there is more text than images in these types of books. Often, the text will not be part of the image itself, as the images work more to complement the descriptions presented in the main content. There is more text than images within the book.
Book Sections for Children’s Picture Books:
Book Sections are handled a bit differently with Picture Books, as they tend to not have Section and Chapter Headings.
front matter (publishing information, books by author, etc.) and the back matter (terms of use, about the author, etc.) are treated the same as other eText books
Image Descriptions for Children's Books
It is possible to describe picture books using medium complexity. Remember to describe the parts of the images that are the most important to the story, and include those small visual details that stick out the most. The illustrator puts them in as part of the visual storytelling.
Tone and word choice are very important with Picture Books. Aiming to match these will help keep the narrative flow for your readers with print disabilities, and create a more enjoyable reading experience.
Remember you are also creating books for adults! If an adult with a print disability is reading to a child who does not have one, the adult will want to know what is in that image. Children love to point out details of pictures. So keep that in mind.
For more documentation for how to describe images for Children's Books, go to Alt-Text for Children's Books
Archive Q&A
Q: For children's books, they don't normally have chapters, so we have to "divide each page into page numbers that match the original pages". For my book, Weekend Dad, when I look at the e-reader, the original pages don't have page numbers. How do I create headings with page numbers that match original pages, if the original pages do not have page numbers? Sorry if this question is weird and confusing.
A: Good Question! You can assign the first page of the story as Page One (heading 1) if there are no page numbers.
Q: What do I do if there aren't any page numbers in a kid's book? The wiki says to make sure my page numbers that I'm using for page headings match up with the book. I'm working on Birdsong and I'm using Calibre to view it and don't see any page numbers.
A: I opened this up in my Kindle reader to check if this was an issue with Calibre (.azw3 is a kindle file) and it still did not show numbers. In this case just assign the headings in order of the pages they appear (i.e. the first page of the story is Page One and so on.)
