Death of the Storybook

Yes, it’s very dark and depressing. And, no. No one told me until now. I completely missed the funeral. There was no kindly written obituary or eulogy. Just a collective decision among the publishing world, I suppose. Apparently, the concept and therefore the genre of Storybook is dead. Extinct.

I grew up reading storybooks. These are the very books my daughter brings home weekly from her school library! They are alive and well in my household, some of whom I’ve held onto for a generation. They are living happily on sturdy shelves in my daughter’s playroom. But evidently, it’s all over. In this moment, I feel like a piece of my childhood has expired along with them.

I’ve been writing pretty actively since January 2021. I never stopped to imagine that what I was writing wasn’t actually a Picture Book. Even through all of my research to date, it never occurred to me that I was writing something else. Then yesterday I was reading Illustrating Children’s Books: Creating Pictures for Publication and it hit me: all this time, I was technically writing Storybooks. The difference being that Storybooks do not rely on the pictures to tell the story, where a Picture Book is very reliant on them, and at minimum, 50 percent illustrations. This was a huge discovery! Except I realized, never once have I seen “Storybook” as a genre in my Agent searches. No one is every boasting their successful “Storybook” writing career. And I wondered, what happened to the Storybook?

So I took to Twitter, to get a feel for the #WritingCommunity and their thoughts on Picture Books vs. Storybooks. Well, one of my new friends from the SCBWI Oklahoma City meeting came in with the answer. Ginny Myers Sain broke the news to me…

STORYBOOK ISN’T A CATEGORY IN KID LIT THESE DAYS.

Now, I feel so foolish. I’ve been marketing my Heron story to agents for MONTHS as a Picture Book when in fact, it may be what’s now called “Easy Reader.” Now, you’re thinking, Jennifer, didn’t you read about Picture Books and Easy Readers in your Guide to Writing for Children and YA? And the answer is YES! I’ve poured through those pages, but saw no resemblance of my writing in the Easy Reader category. My story came in within the expected word count for a Picture Book and I never thought too much more about that. In fact, up until the past few days, I’ve not worried about illustrations much, focusing solely on the writing. Then Tuesday, I received some Feedback from an agent, and I stewed over her words for several days. She pretty much brought to my attention that I wasn’t writing a Picture Book. She didn’t say it in those words, but that’s now the bottom line.

Then Ginny sent me this article, with some updated, (or at the very least) additional Genre definitions. Here’s the article for your viewing pleasure. This very morning, while sipping coffee on my back porch, I came to the conclusion that I HAVE, in fact, been writing “Easy Reader” stories. Thanks so much for sharing, Ginny! You are a gem and I’m so happy to know you!

So, have I wasted the past four months querying agents under the wrong genre? Possibly. And now, I regroup and move forward with that much more knowledge and with even more educated intentions.

Featured Image is my daughter’s book case, including a lifetime’s collection of Little Golden Books, the Storybooks of my childhood.