Children's Book Comparison Essay

One of the earliest memories a child may have is of someone reading them a bedtime story. Children’s stories have always been a big part of child development. Every year new stories are being made and spread to the homes of children all over the world. Each new age of children are hearing different stories than the last. Children’s books have evolved in many ways from around the 1950s up to only ten years ago. This causes for similarities and differences to be seen within the stories. The children’s books by P. D. Eastman, Are You My Mother?, and by Margaret Bridges, Will You Take Care of Me?, are fine examples of this. These two children’s books show the way a story’s message, illustrations, and narrations, change through the centuries. The

Some books have very detailed and colorful images, but others may be simple and lacking in color. Taking a quick look at children’s books from around the 1950s and from roughly ten years ago, there are specific differences that can be noticed between the two ages of books.
Children’s books from around the 1950s are primarily in either black and white or dull shades. However, what they lack in color, they make up for in detail. The illustration in Are You My Mother? are mostly in the same shade of brown, but they are tastefully done and appealing to the eye of both children and adults. The quality illustrations like those in Are You My Mother? began to decline as the years went on.
Margaret Bridges’ book, Will You Take Care of Me? is a fine example of how the artistic quality in children's books is just not as tasteful as those from around the 1950s. The bright and colorful images in this book are appealing, but they lack balance. The crooked lines and the smudged colors take away from the image, which is supposed to be one of the most important parts of the story. These pictures would be appealing to children, but not as much to adults, because they look as if they could have been made by children. This may be because Bridges is aiming this book toward a much younger age of

that this book is aimed toward an older age of children. The book itself has many small pages. Each page has a fair amount of smaller text, some have much more than others. The narration of this book plays out a whole story for a child to read for themselves. This book is meant for children who have started to read for themselves and can handle the many words with small font.
Will You Take Care of Me? is definitely aimed at an even younger audience than those of Are You My Mother?. This book contains very large pages that contain more picture than text. Even though each page has very little text, there are still less than half the number of pages than that of Are You My Mother?. The narration of this book is very simple with large font. This book can be seen as one that a parent would read to their child instead of the child reading it for themselves. From this, it can be seen that this book is aimed at a younger demographic than Are You My