Imagine you are Sam. The night light is on, your hands are trembling, and you have finally opened the closet door. Inside are three monster brothers called Wayne, Francisco and Salvatore, plus Paul, a robot who doesn’t talk, he just beeps. The brothers are terribly sorry to have disturbed you, and the real twist is that they are scared of your parents. By the last page, everyone is sitting down to tea, and sometimes a quick board game.
Monster Tea Party is a square hardback picture book written by Talia Jean Campbell and Ellie Campbell and illustrated by Fru Farkas, published by Be Brave Press in Sarasota, Florida, an independent press making books that help children understand what being brave really means. The dedication sums up the spirit: “for our younger selves, who were very afraid of the monsters that lurked in the darkness”. When Fru’s artwork reached us, Mike wrote back: “We see a lot of children’s books and your illustrations are genuinely superb and some of the best.”
Ellie asked us plenty of good questions along the way, the same ones most picture book makers type into a search bar. Here are the answers, with her book as the evidence.
What size should a square picture book be?
Ellie’s first emails weighed up softback against hardback and our popular 210 x 210mm against a roomier 228 x 228mm. She asked for both squares to be priced, compared them properly, and went for the bigger one in a case bound hardback.
Those extra millimetres are easy to underestimate. Opened flat, a spread runs past 45cm, so Fru’s night scenes stretch out like a stage set, and a small reader can lean right in among the monsters. If your illustrations carry detail into the corners, ask for quotes on both squares side by side and make the call with the numbers in front of you. Our article on sizes, layouts and stocks for picture books sets out the common options.
Are printed endpapers worth it in a children’s hardback?
On this book, without question. Behind the front board, the whole inside spread erupts in warm orange, with cats, rabbits, teacups and tiny faces tumbling across it. Mike called that animal spread “a massive winner!” before a single copy existed, and it is the first thing everyone sees.
The endpapers are printed on 170gsm uncoated, a thicker, bulkier sheet than the 150gsm silk text, and they work twice over. Their reverse sides carry the copyright page at the front and the closing story page at the back. Moving those two pages onto the endpapers left 30 pages on silk and brought the price down a little. When Ellie checked her running order, copyright on the left facing the title page on the right, we confirmed it “works perfectly”.
Will an orange endpaper show through the page behind it?
Ellie asked us this directly, and it is a fair worry. Our answer was honest. Hold the sheet up to a lamp and you will see a glow of orange from the white side, as you would with much heavier card. Turn the pages normally and you might notice “ever so slightly more of a warmth” on the copyright page, with every word still easy to read.
Then came the opinion she was hoping for: “I love the orange ends though, they will have loads of impact when the reader opens the cover.” She agreed, the orange stayed, and when her printed copy reached Florida she wrote back: “The endpapers are incredible.”
Will small words get lost on a dark illustration?
They can, which is why Ellie sent us one spread to check while she finished the design. The trouble was one word, “sleepy”, sitting close to a dark area of the picture that pulled the eye away from it. We agreed that lightening the background behind it would help.
Elsewhere the darkness is the point. A gigantic hand-drawn “DAADD!!!” slashes across a midnight-blue spread with the monster triplets and the robot sharing the page, and a window-shadow night scene sits opposite a calm white page. The silk keeps those blues deep and the textured greys detailed, and it gives the white pages a clean brightness behind the text. Before approving your own files, zoom out and look for words parked on the darkest part of a picture; nudging the background lighter costs nothing at artwork stage.
How do you set up a hardback cover so the art wraps the boards?
A hardback cover needs more artwork than you see on the shelf. The printed sheet folds round greyboard and tucks inside, so the design needs an extra 17mm turn-in on every edge. Ellie’s first cover file was close but stopped short of those wraps.
We dropped it into a correctly sized template, sent our walkthrough for building a case bound cover file, and asked for the deep navy background to be extended. Fru had it back to us the same afternoon. The finished cover is a little gem: a hand-lettered orange title over a giant steaming mug, a small boy peeping round its side, checked monster arms and one segmented robot arm creeping in from the edges, all on 170gsm silk with a matt laminate that keeps glare low through nightly readings. And the 9mm spine? Plenty of room for a decent-sized title, as we promised Ellie when she asked.
Can a UK printer look after a US picture book?
Ellie was in Florida from her first email, so shipping costs were on the table from the start. We posted her a free pack of our papers and finishes across the Atlantic, then printed copies for her to judge before she committed to the main run. She even asked where we buy our book mailers, because “the ones you use are great”.
For the main order she picked slower, cheaper freight, and we timed the delivery for a date when she would be home to receive the boxes. Two years later, she was back with her next picture book, and her email opened like this:
“Two years ago, I printed our first picture book, Monster Tea Party, with you. The quality is just outstanding!”
Ellie, co-author of Monster Tea Party
If your own book has monsters, teacups or anything else waiting behind a cover, tell us about it on our children’s book printing page and we’ll work out which square suits it best.
PaperbacksA5, 44 pages, perfect bound£246for 100
Product cataloguesA5, 28 pages, stapled£166for 100