Writing Early Readers

From idea to pitch, Vicky shares her process and real world examples.

This post is going to be a deep dive into writing early readers. I am the author of three early reader series, for a total of eight books, and the illustrator of five of those books. I’ll talk about how I moved from picture books to writing early readers, from idea through pitch, with real examples from my process so you can see the different stages of the development and elements of the final proposal. I’ll provide tips and suggested exercises for you to tackle your own early reader project.

Here are the early readers that I have written. FRIENDBOTS is a comic book format, illustrated by me, and BEST BUDDIES is highly graphic early reader (but not called a graphic novel, I don’t know why), illustrated by Luisa Leal. My latest series doesn’t have covers yet, so you’ll have to stay tuned for those, ONE MAD CAT, coming in 2025!

Early Readers by Vicky Fang

First up, what is an early reader? You might recognize early readers by the coded branding or banners on them.

Early reader banner examples

But many early readers these days don’t have that branding! (Think ELEPHANT & PIGGIE, YASMIN, BEST BUDDIES, etc.) At their core, early readers are intended for kids just learning to read. This means they are designed to:

• Transition new readers from being read to (picture books) to reading independently (chapter books)

• Use simple sentence structure and vocabulary, including lots of sight words

• Boost reading confidence

Every early reader line has its own level definition and formatting rules. Series are consistently leveled. Given that publishers each have their own standards, how should you approach writing and pitching an early reader series? Let’s dig in.

(This is the first in our series of paid posts focused on deep dives into craft and business. Don’t worry, we will still be posting free posts every other week! The rest of this craft deep dive is for our paid subscribers—thank you for subscribing!)