“Wash, wash, wash. The germs are running scared.” On that page of No More Germs, a boy scrubs his hands at a basin while five green letters, G, E, R, M and S, tumble off across the bathroom floor with little puffs of dust behind them. It is the payoff to the cover, where the word GERMS is built from spiky green germ characters with eyes. Written by Jay Martey and illustrated by Darren R Awuah, No More Germs is a short hygiene book for three to seven year olds, made of repeated, rhythmic lines that young children can chant along with. Jacqui Martey brought it to us in November 2020, and every choice in its specification had a reason. Here they are, decision by decision.
The book is 170 x 170mm, a small square that sits comfortably on a toddler's lap and in a parent's bag. Square suits picture books because each page frames an illustration rather than a column of text, and No More Germs has only a line or two per page. Darren's flat colour scenes, a park, a bedroom window, a bathroom with tiled walls, have room to sit without crowding the words. If you are working out the right size for your own early years book, how trim sizes relate to standard sheets helps explain why some squares waste less paper than others.
The cover is a 4 page wrap on 300gsm gloss with a gloss laminated outer face. Gloss is the shiniest finish on our list, and it suits the art: a powder blue sky, scalloped white clouds, a yellow sun, orange NO MORE lettering and that boy with his bar of soap. Lamination also gives the cover a wipeable skin, which matters in a book about germs that will be handled by children with jam on their fingers.
There is a quieter reason too. When Jacqui came back the following year with her next title, Wonderful Words, Mike recommended gloss lamination again “to prevent the ink cracking on the cover folds.” Heavy colour that runs over a fold can crack when a cover is bent back. A laminate holds it together. If your cover is a full bleed block of colour wrapped round a spine or a fold, ask for lamination as a matter of course.
Inside, 12 pages print on 130gsm gloss. Gloss keeps flat colour bright and black type sharp, which matters when the type is the reading lesson. The text pages switch between solid sage, pink and orange, with large, rounded lettering such as “Brush, brush, brush. Brush, say no to sweets.” Gloss makes those colour fields glow, and at 130gsm the pages are light enough for a small booklet to fold neatly and close flat.
Add the 4 page cover and you have a 16 page book, wire stitched with staples through the spine fold. For a book this slim, stapling is the natural choice: it opens flat for reading aloud, and it turns round fast. Our page count rules for a stapled booklet explain why stapled books go up in fours.
The first PDFs came through at exactly 170 x 170mm, with no bleed and no crop marks. Mike sent our illustrated bleed walkthrough and a short bleed fix: pull the background image 3mm beyond the page edge in InDesign, then type 3mm into all four bleed boxes in the Marks and Bleeds menu when exporting. Darren reworked the files and the corrected version arrived the next day.
Jacqui then ordered a small first batch so she could turn real pages before committing to the full order. When they arrived she wrote back:
Books arrived and look amazing. Thank you guys so much.
Jacqui, who published No More Germs
Holding a printed copy also showed her a change she wanted to make, and after one more PDF proof she spotted another detail and replied, “Ok so you must be my guardian angel.” With those fixes in, the full run went to press in time for her virtual book launch that December, together with stickers of her characters printed alongside. Jacqui also asked whether she could carry the FSC logo; Mike explained she could print “Printed on FSC papers”, but the logo itself needs your own certificate. It is a small point that saves an awkward reprint later.
A first batch, a careful proof and a cover that can take a bit of mess: that is a sound recipe for any early years book. When yours is ready, price a little square booklet with gloss pages.
