Photo's i took at the National Archives, London

^Queen Elizabeth 1

^William Shakespeare's will

These were two of the pictures i took of two of the artefacts we seen at the National Archives.  

National Archives Trip

For our main assessed brief we will be creating an E-Book for the National Archives, London. The book is about significant people in British history and will be used by teachers all across the country to teach their class about these three significant people.

To start we were given a list of 10 people who the TNA (The National Archives) thought to be the most significant people in British history. Our job is to pick three of these ten and then create an activity  book which will engage children aged 5-7 yrs.

I found the trip very rewarding and helpful as it allowed me the opportunity to speak with the clients in person ad get their wants/needs and what they don't want put into this E-Book. It was important for me to meet with the clients at TNA because i felt a bit in the dark to start with and i wasn't a 100% confident with the brief. All that lack of confidence has gone now which i am glad to say and i now feel fully confident to deliver an engaging and exciting book for TNA.

After some research and debate the 3 significant people i am choosing are as follows:

 1 - William Shakespeare
 2 - Captain. William Cook
 3 - Elizabeth 1 of England

I have chosen these three people as they are all roughly similar times in history and i want to showcase how diverse they were and how different their lives were.

 Captain James Cook

 Queen Elizabeth 1

William Shakespeare

Art Style's

Information books – 9-11 yr olds  

From ages 9 – 11 yrs old I think children want to be taken a bit more seriously and therefore like reading books which look more 'adult like'. Still plenty of images and bold fonts but there will be more text for the child to read. The layout will be more sophisticated with the colour pallet having a much bigger range. A series of books which suit this are the Doodling Kindersley books. These books were the highlight of my childhood and where i learnt most stuff from. these books make the child feel older and more like their older siblings/parents or teachers as they are reading something which looks and feels like a real book. 

Another type of book children of this age will like, are fierce looking books – animal books about dangerous species etc. From tv shows such as steve Irwin and deadly 60. This 'fear factor' gets children excited as most the species they read or hear about from these books are very exotic and might not have come across them before.

Picture book 3-6 yr olds

Picture books for 3-6 yr olds will vary quite a bit as a lot changes in the three years from 3 to 6. Saying this though there will be some characteristics which will carry on. These characteristics will include a lot of images and little text. These books tend to be very illustrative to try and engage the child and keep them interested. The colours will be bright but shading and texture will start to be introduced unlike the toddlers books where it is all block colours. texture i feel is a massive part to picture books as it adds depth to the page, which helps create a secret atmosphere in which the child is a part of.

A book which best suits these years is the Gruffalo. The Gruffalo is a book which every child will remember and it's not because of the story which makes us remember, it's the illustrations and just how intriguing and interesting they are. You get sucked into an imaginary world, full of all these odd but amazing looking things. 

Toddlers first objects books

Toddlers first object books will be very simple and bright. The colours will be block colours so the images are easily distinguished. The font will be big, bold and the kearning will be quite big to make it easy as possible for the toddler to see. The art style is quite generic for toddler picture books as you are limited to what you can do and how much detail you can put into the books as you don't want to overload the toddler and cause sensory confusion. You want the toddler to be as infused as possible, keeping him/her engaged throughout the whole book and using bright colours is a great way to do this.