Planning Page Turns

Today I’m working on the sketches for my second draft of my Picture Book Applesauce. I’m trying to decide how to handle page turns.

A great page turn, makes the reader what to turn the page. This is where the illustrator can make great decisions or weak decisions. I’m afraid that I might be making weak decisions.

I just pulled off my book shelf “Black Out” by John Rocco. Pulling a children’s book off my shelf to see how others have done it is always a big help.

Here is a page turn that I think is effective:

The combination of the text and the picture, makes you want to know what happens next. This page says it all: “And Then…….”

I think I just figured out that not every page turn must be fabulous. I need to find the “And Then” parts of my story to place correctly on the page turn. I’m off to take a kid to an activity 30 minutes away and I’ll have an hour to think about this. I’m taking my draft with me and I’m going to be looking for the “And Then” parts of my story.