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!"
@JQ I am not a seasoned veteran. I do have a resource to offer you though. In this book in traditional Mandarin, 郝廣才, the author, has a section about the importance of feedback from children.
https://www.books.com.tw/products/0010340040
There're also interviews with him online where 郝廣才 discusses how he implements feedback from children during the process before getting a book published. I remember him talking about having the children tell you the story by looking at the images without the text. If they leave parts out or get confused then you know you need to change something. I think children will be able to understand your line drawings and will appreciate them without the rendering.
@JQ I think that the action and characters are just lovely, very engaging. The anthropomorphism in the animals is believable, and the palette in your color spread is bright and engaging. I did notice that in the 1st and 3rd layouts the characters overlap the gutter (center line) which could get lost in the fold or curve of the page when the book is bound. I suggest shifting the characters slightly away from the gutter, especially the fish and the characters' hands in the 1st spread.
please excuse my sorry attempts to rearrange... I think the word bubbles are probably OK, but maybe someone with more experience with word bubbles would be able to weigh in.
@JQ I am not yet a published illustrator, but I do have 4 kids of my own and I have a degree in early childhood education. This is quite an intriguing question.
Let the children look at a spread of pictures and ask them open ended questions.
"What story do you see happening in this picture?"
"What happened to this character?"
"What do you feel when you look at this picture?"
"Why do you like the story?"
"Would you like to be one of the characters in this story?"
"What do you think will happen next?"
I hope this helps you and points you in the right direction! I always ask for kid help because they are brutally honest and, in the end, they're who I want to understand the story the most!
@JQ I reread your question again. It seems that you are also concerned that a child will not be able to understand the pictures when they are sketches vs rendered out completely. A child will notice that there is not color, but it won't matter to them. If you have added value to the picture, I think that is enough to judge from a child's response on whether the story makes sense or not. If you have more questions, feel free to add more!
@JQ Sorry, I just re-read your post and realized you weren't looking for a crit. Sorry again!! So, I agree with @Lisa-Clark you could add a little bit of value to help clarify where needed, but kids should be able to tell what is going on from your drawings. They are very clear. You could post something online and ask for help in a parent forum. Maybe you could create a Google form survey that the parent can fill out with their child's responses.
@Stephanie-H Wow thank you for that resource！I think seeing videos of him in work will be super helpful，will definitely be checking those out.
Thanks for correcting my assumption too that kids won't "get" the line drawings without colour！
@Lisa-Clark Thank you for giving me data points to debunk my naive assumption (that kids won't "get" the line drawing like they would the finished spreads）
The point about adding value makes sense！Perhaps even doing colour flats would be okay, as they wouldn't be too time consuming and would lay the groundwork for final rendering anyway (so not totally wasted work if I need to modify some of the spreads)
@jenn Thank you for the suggestions and validation! No worries at all, your crit is also appreciated and thanks so much for taking the time to do the draw-overs.
I'm definitely struggling with the gutter problem; I'm already trying to keep the characters away from the gutter. But I'm trying do that while not compromising too much on the composition or the logic of the story sequence, especially in the two-page spreads where compositionally it's appealing to keep them around the centre.
For example, the girl and otter are seated much closer together throughout the book, so I was trying to keep them as close to each other as possible while keeping their faces away from the gutter danger zone (about 0.5" or so), but their arms/hands invariably land within it. I could change the angle completely but I wanted this back-view as a nice ending to the story, so you can see the beautiful lake their sitting in front of. If you have any other suggestions of how to overcome this sort of problem I'd be interested to hear!
But I do see that the lizard on the tree trunk could be moved further from the centre line without compromising the logic and composition much.
I realize my question was phrased in a way that was chockful of assumptions that I am grateful for y'all helping to debunk!
First of all I put "seasoned children's book veterans" but I guess that was a bit silly, anyone who has children's book experience or experience with young kids would surely have something helpful to share on this (hence I edited the original question)
Secondly, I just assumed kids wouldn't get my spreads without the colour, but I'm glad that you are telling me otherwise. I suppose the initial emotional reaction would be different to the finished spread vs black and white but y'all are right in pointing out that kids should still be able to understand the overall story with just the linework.
I guess I was a bit skeptical about the comprehensibility of these sketches because someone who I showed the manuscripts to for proofreading said something along the lines like: "don't expect me to give feedback on the drawings though, they are too sketchy for me to understand well." I think I took it too literally and thought that if and adult had trouble it would be even harder with kids. (To be fair, this person doesn't have any visual arts/design background but neither do kids!)
@JQ I totally get that about an adult saying they can't really give feedback. My husband is an engineer and very thoroughly not helpful in that regard. He just says things like, "That's nice." Lol! I think it just depends on the adult you are asking. They may have used that as an excuse perhaps because they didn't feel like they had anything they could add to help you. I think that your line drawings are quite clear and any adult or child who is willing to give feedback and felt like they could offer something helpful would do so.
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@Lisa-Clark Agree. Sometimes adults don't want to give feedback and "make themselves sound stupid" so they give safe feedback like "Nice" or generic "I don't know enough".
Kids, on the other hand don't really have such reservation. They will tell you what they see, even if it's the "wrong" one. If enough of them tell me that my drawing of a lion is a dog, then I'll go back and improve it 
Ooh, that’s really tricky, isn’t it! Because usually you’d have a finished book to show them, you wouldn’t be asking for feedback on rough sketches (plus, I know my 6yo wouldn’t have much to say besides, “wow, that’s really good, mummy!”).
The only thing I can think of is printing off finished coloured versions of your characters and reading your story while using the characters like puppets. At least then you can engage them and get feedback on your story and characters.
