Responsive: Emil and the Detectives Ideas

The last of the Penguin briefs that I was tackling was "Emil and the Detectives" by Erich Kastner. I was excited for this brief but also a little worried as I am not familiar with the story, nor how children's book are illustrated nowadays. I also have no younger siblings/cousins to ask, so this brief is going to be very hard for me, however I am going to try my hardest to make it work! The brief states that it wants a new concept that will attract a new generation of readers, whilst maintaining the original heart warming story that is a must read for all children. It also wants to have a design that will attract parents, so that they will want to pick it up for their child also. This I am am more comfortable with. 

I broke down the brief next, and thought about some ways to visualise the story on a cover. Because I don't want the cover to be ambiguous, as the audience is children and not English Literature students, I thought about illustrating different parts of the novel on the cover so that the child will know exactly what the contents of the book is, and what they will be expecting from the story. It will also help the parents in having some sight into what they will be reading to their child. I also thought about having vivid and exciting colours, because children love bright and simple things. I think simple will be the way to go about this as children won't really care how detailed a character is but will care whether something looks 'boring' or not. I also thought about having silhouettes of the detectives on the cover, to give a bit of mystery to the page but contrast that with exciting colours so that children won't be scared of what's in the book, more so interested and ready to open it. 

Either way I am a bit more apprehensive with this novel because I am not 100% sure or confident in what children are looking for. If I had a younger cousin or sibling I would ask them what they like as quick as I could, but for now I am going to have to just follow the brief and assume what I think a child would be interested in.