Snout is a young hedgehog. One morning he wakes up in a nest of leaves and moss, yawns, and finds his Mum and two sisters waiting at the exit. It is time for his first trip outside. Snout's First Trip Out is Joanne Gilbert's picture book about what happens next, and the cover calls it “A book written for hedgehogs”. Joanne founded WildChiswick, a wildlife group in west London, and she wrote the story to help children understand what hedgehogs need from us to survive. The book was published by Izzy and Jack, with illustrations by Izzy Bean, and we printed it as a 203 x 203mm paperback. Below are the questions authors ask us most about books like this, answered with Snout as the example.
How does a picture book teach without preaching?
By letting the characters run into the problem. Halfway through, Snout's family meets another hedgehog on a pavement in front of a red brick wall. She is upset: all new fences and paving slabs, and nowhere to eat or sleep. Mum sighs and leads the family another way. No lecture, just a small, sad scene a child can understand. Joanne's wider hope, set out on the WildChiswick site, is that the story nudges families into doing more for hedgehogs in their own gardens, including hedgehog highways through fences.
The layout supports that gentle pace. Text sits on the left hand page in a rounded, open typeface with wide margins and an indent at the start of each paragraph, and a full colour painting fills the right. A grown up reads, a child looks, and the picture carries the feeling. If you are writing an educational story of your own, that split is easy to plan and hard to beat.
Which paper keeps painted fur and brick rich?
Izzy Bean's painted illustrations have a lot going on: individual spines on a hedgehog's back, autumn leaves inside the nest, the mortar lines of a garden wall, a crescent moon over a fence at night. The 32 inside pages are 170gsm silk. Silk has a smooth, lightly sealed surface, so fine strokes stay sharp and dark colours such as nest brown and brick red stay dense rather than soaking into the sheet. The close up of Snout with a long pink earthworm draped across his face is the proof: you can count the white tips of his fur.
Weight counts too: every leaf at this grammage is sturdy enough for small hands to turn without creasing. For more on matching stock to artwork, choosing a trim and a paper for an illustrated story is a useful next read.
Can a slim picture book have a square spine?
Yes. Snout has a glued, square spine just 3mm wide, close to the slimmest book we can perfect bind while still giving a neat edge. A matt laminated 300gsm silk board wraps the block, so the book holds its shape in a bookcase and looks like a proper paperback rather than a pamphlet. Many short picture books are stapled, and stapling is a fine choice, but a square spine gives a bookseller or a gift shop something to stack and display. Our tips on gluing a short picture book into a square spine explain the page counts that work.
The cover itself is worth a look: sage green framed with ferns, white flowers and blackberries, two hedgehogs curled together in the middle, and the hand drawn title in navy capitals with a white outline. The matt lamination keeps the greens soft and stops glare when the book is read under a lamp at bedtime.
What belongs inside the front cover?
Open Snout and a leaf pattern in two greens fills the inside cover, a quiet bit of decoration that sets the woodland mood before the story starts. Facing it, the imprint page carries everything a book needs: the publisher, the copyright line, the illustrator credit and the ISBN. Self publishing? Make room for that page early. Booksellers, libraries and readers all look for it, and it is much easier to design in than to squeeze in later.
What happens when the first print sells out?
For Snout, the answer was more Snout. In 2025 Jack at Izzy and Jack returned for Joanne's second book, Snout's First Friend, at the same size and on the same papers. When those files arrived at 41 inside pages, we pointed out that pages have to come in an even count, and a blank page took it to 42. Then in March 2026 Jack wrote again: Joanne had sold out of the first book and wanted to reprint it, with an updated author bio and a few text changes. The reprint ran on the same specification as the original, and the new copies went straight to Joanne.
That is the real advantage of getting the first edition right. When your own story is close to ready, tell us about the story and the readers it is for, and when you want to compare finishes, send for silk and matt laminated swatches first.
PaperbacksA5, 44 pages, perfect bound£246for 100
