24th Annual Awards for Children
We were disappointed, overall, with this year's children's books. On the whole, the illustrations are quite strong, but the typography, the page design, and the interaction between the text design and the illustrations are not. In particular, we noticed that the typography in these books tends to be poor, that is, technically substandard, as if the publisher or the designer had concluded that in books intended for children, typography doesn't matter. But of course typography matters to children every bit as much as it matters to adults. And if children are not given good typography as children, they will not appreciate it when they grow to be adults.
Often in these books, the designers have chosen a playful typeface, and this is a very reasonable thing to do in a children's book. The problem is that the attention to typographic detail is almost always missing. Many of these books just seem to be going through the motions, very familiar in children's books: repeating perfectly standard approaches and perfectly standard illustrations. Most of the books we chose, however, despite the complaints we have made, are quite nice. They do manifest real attention to detail, and real creative work.
