Hi all, I've been working on a series of Chinese children's books (my first time) , and while I feel I've got good stories for my books, and have got validation from some adults I've shared the manuscripts with, I realize I don't really know how to get feedback from the children who are going to be the actual audience of my book, before the book is in it's finished form.
I don't have young children around me, but I can always ask relatives who have young kids. However, my question is more of, how do you get effective feedback from kids before you have the finished art?
Adults (perhaps not all, but hopefully artistically/creatively trained/inclined ones) can see past the roughness of the sketches to be able to tell you if the storytelling and composition is working. But with young kids, they're probably going to react mostly from gut feel and that response is going to be very different when you present them with a finished, coloured spread vs black and white dummy sketches.
So for the seasoned children's book veterans out there, EDIT: For children's book creators or parents with young kids or early childhood educators, how do you suggest I go about getting feedback from kids on my story without having to sink all that time into producing finished artworks for spreads I may still end up tweaking? (Speaking as someone who has a very detailed and time-consuming rendering style, too)
These are samples of my dummy sketches, just for reference:
(Otter says: Hahaha! I'll have it to myself then!)
My one coloured spread
From another book. Water monitor says: "Wa!! This is so comfy!"