Creating Picturebooks for Young Readers

Start the course by meeting María, who tells you about how she became an author and how self-publishing made an impact on her career. She shows you some of her favorite books, fanzines, and other published work and talks about her creative influences.

Get a better understanding of what a picturebook is and how images interact with the text and format. María explains different structures for picturebooks and shares some tricks to help you find ideas for your project.

Now it's time to put your idea down on paper. Lay out the structure of your story, decide what content you want to put on each page, and start working on your sketches. Then, move on to the design phase. Choose a two-page spread and use the collage technique with cardstock to play with colors and composition. Create text using pencils and ink, and then transform your work into a digital collage using Photoshop.

Finally, design the cover of your picturebook following the important concepts you learn throughout the course. To finish the course, María gives you some tips on how to promote your project and submit it to a publisher.