Writing an Interactive Picture Book
Vicky shares writing advice and mentor texts for interactivity.
Before I became a children’s book author and illustrator, I was a product designer. Specifically, I was an interaction designer, which meant that I designed how things worked. I love, love, love thinking about how a reader is interacting with my books. So of course, I love writing books with built-in interactivity! While I have several interactive books, with Halloween coming up I decided to do a deep dive into THE BOO CREW NEEDS YOU!. I’ll talk about how I developed the interactive elements, what mentor texts I used, and how I pitched it. So, let’s go!
A Peek Inside the Book
THE BOO CREW NEEDS YOU! is an interactive story that invites the reader to take action on every page to help save Halloween!
The Idea
At first, I only had one moment of interactivity in the book, toward the end. I was inspired by Dan Santat’s ARE WE THERE YET? which features a (literal) book twist toward the end.
But when my agent read it, she suggested I add interactivity throughout. Daunted by the ask, I tossed the story back in the proverbial drawer and ignored it for a good year or so. Eventually, I was inspired to tackle it again… with interactivity on every page! Which meant I needed to dig into some good mentor texts.
Mentor Texts
My first inspiration was the iconic PRESS HERE book by Hervé Tullet (note the nod to that book in the above spread.) If you haven’t read PRESS HERE, you are in for a treat! Find a young reader and get ready for a fun read—tapping, twisting, shaking, and blowing on the book.
The interactivity in PRESS HERE works so well, but it’s approached through more abstract visuals with painted dots that you’re interacting with. So I sought out some narrative texts as well.
I found BUNNY SLOPES by Claudia Rueda, where the reader helps a bunny make its way through a snowy scape through tilting, shaking, and twisting.
It was helpful for me to see how each action manifested in a change on the next page, and where the book took liberties between spreads with narrative and art.
I also thought about about other types of interactivity, like Martin Handford’s WHERE’S WALDO? for seek-and-find, or mazes, or choose-own-adventures, or lift-the-flap books. I added some of these elements into THE BOO CREW books, but did not include choose-your-own-adventure of lift-the-flap elements, because they conflicted with the primary mechanism of seeing the result of your action on the next page. I also imagined new interactions, which I discuss more below.
Since I wrote this book, there are some more interactive books out in the market than I was aware of, so a quick Google search yields the following lists (and the question of why isn’t THE BOO CREW on these?? 😂):
22 Interactive Books for Energetic Little Readers
Books Like Press Here: 11 Interactive Stories for Hands-On Kids
The Best Interactive Picture Books.
Writing Interactivity
Once I had a “menu” of interactive elements, I began weaving them into the story. There are a few things I thought about as I wrote and tips for you if you’re thinking about writing an interactive story:
1. Establish the Interactivity Right Away
From my experience as an interaction designer, I knew it was important to set up the interactivity right away. I started with the iconic “press here” to kick things off, but when my eventual editor, Wendy McClure (who is wonderful), asked me to add more exposition up front, I added a “turn the page” action as a natural interaction that’s already built into books! It’s important to make sure the reader knows they’re an active part of the story right away.
2. Vary the Interactions
This is perhaps obvious, but I tried to make sure I varied the interactions. This meant trying not to repeat interactions and mixing up the types of interaction as much as possible. You can also find subtle ways to vary the same type of interaction. So, for example, pushing is a common interaction, but I present it differently in differently situations—it might be pressing a button, or pushing a switch, or tapping a pumpkin. And I try not to put similar interactions right after one another. Think about how many different ways you might “push” on something… “push,” “tap,” “press,” “smush,” “smash,” “slap”—you get the idea.
3. Imagine New Interactions
Because THE BOO CREW NEEDS YOU! is heavier on the narrative than many of the mentor texts I looked at, I felt that it opened up the opportunity for new interactions, like inviting the reader to “take a breath” or “pat themselves on the back.” Think about new interactions that might make sense with your story!
4. Match your Interactions to Your Narrative
Find creative ways to use your menu of interactions to match your narrative. In PRESS HERE, the reader blows on the book to “get rid of the black” and ends up blowing all the dots away. In THE BOO CREW NEEDS YOU!, the reader blows out a candle to help a scared Frankenstein-like monster. (And back to the idea of varying the interaction, you can imagine that the type of blowing a reader might do for these two actions would be different!)
5. Ramp up the Complexity
Much like the tension in the book, you can structure your interactions to ramp up in complexity over time. Partially, this is to match the narrative, but it also maintains the interest of the reader. If you start off with basics, like tapping, and move up to more complex actions, like twisting the book, it adds to the surprise and delight of the story.
6. Check Your Pacing
Once I had interactivity on every page, my story started to feel a little… frenetic. Do this! Do that! Everything was so urgent because the reader needed to save Halloween! Thanks to Christine who pointed it out in an early critique, I realized that I needed to create some pacing in both the narrative and the interactivity to calm things down. I added a spread in the middle of the narrative to congratulate the reader on all their hard work and invite them to take a breath before the final interactive challenge began!
7. Why Is Your Book Interactive?
Perhaps most importantly, why is your book interactive? Like any element in your picture book, the interactivity should play a role in the storytelling. For THE BOO CREW NEEDS YOU!, making the reader an actor in the story was an integral part of the story and the heart of the book. The theme of the book is about helping others—because we all need help sometimes. What is the theme of your book and how does interactivity help you tell that story?
Pitching the Book
Here is a peek at what my agent sent out to editors.
The Summary Pitch
“On the night of the Monster Ball, the Boo Crew is summoned to help fix problems all over town—with the reader’s help! This interactive picture book in the style of PRESS HERE introduces an endearing crew of Halloween monsters and fun rhyming text. With actionable prompts on every page, kids will help the Boo Crew put out fires, repair pumpkins, and save the Monster Ball!”
Because the interaction in this book didn’t involve any novelty elements (flaps, cut-outs, etc.), the pitch contained the same elements as any other picture book pitch. I just made sure to highlight the interactivity in the summary pitch, highlighting the key hooks: interactivity, reader’s active role, rhyming text, and Halloween!
The Manuscript
The manuscript I submitted followed standard picture book formatting. Because page turns were so important for this one, I did include pagination. I made each call to action bold, because I wanted them to be clear (both in the manuscript and the final product.) I submitted and sold it as a 32-page book, though the final product ended up being 40 pages.
I am extremely grateful for the wonderful home that this book found at Sourcebooks with my editor Wendy McClure!
Tips for Interactive Story Readings
So fast forward to having the actual book completed—hooray! I had a fantastic experience working with the Sourcebooks team (and am loving working on Book Two as well.) I am incredibly lucky that they picked Saoirse Lou to illustrate, as her illustrations alone are reason to buy this book. My editor and publicist have been amazing! Yet, like any of my books, I panicked right before my launch about the reception this book would receive. But as soon as the book launched and I started doing events with kids, I discovered the magic of interactive story times. They are SO MUCH FUN. But it didn’t click the first time! I had to get some tips from teachers and booksellers. So here are a few tips from me if you’re reading an interactive book to kids.
1. Let the kids come to you!
The first couple of story times I did, I made the mistake of asking kids to raise their hands and bringing the book over to them for interaction. It was awkward weaving through the kids and weaving back. Finally, a bookstore event manager (thank you, Robin, at Books Inc. in Campbell) suggested I stand still and let them come to me, and that worked MUCH better and I continued to do it that way for the rest of my story times.
2. Let kids line up to do each interaction.
Especially with younger kids, they will be eager to do every interaction. Let kids form a little line to interact, and cycle around. This may naturally happen, or you may need to encourage it if younger ones don’t quite understand.
3. If you’re on stage, they will hesitate.
I only did one event on a stage, but I found that kids were much more hesitant to come up because it felt more formal and like they had to take turns and not come up more than once (or really, their parents felt this way). In the future, I will preface by saying they will be invited up on stage and show them where to stand/line up and assure them it’s okay to come up multiple times.
That’s It!
That’s all I have for this post on writing interactive picture books, though I have a lot more to say about interactive books in general! This was supposed to be a general post and then I realized there was too much to unpack and decided to focus on the interactive picture book. I’ll talk about novelty books and their elements in another post. If you have any questions or comments, please share!
Happy (interactive) writing!
Banned Books Week
This week is Banned Books Week. We’d love to send a shout-out to all of the librarians standing up for the Freedom to Read. If you’re an author and haven’t yet joined Authors Against Book Bans, please consider joining us.
For those looking for more information or ways to help, check out these organizations: We Need Diverse Books, EveryLibrary, PEN America, National Coalition Against Censorship, ACLU, United Against Book Bans, The Authors Guild Foundation and grassroots Freedom to Read groups.
Thanks for sharing from start to finish! This was fantastic. While reading, it inspired me to revisit a narrative concept book that has been getting passes and possibility add novelty or interactivity like your book. I will say I did get stumped when you asked about "theme". I just realized my story doesn't have a theme, since it's about solving a mystery sort of.