Using Page Turns in Chicken Wants a Nap

Turning the page can create humor, move time forward or create a pause.

A version of this email was originally published on Cynsations when Chicken Wants a Nap was first published. I thought it’d be helpful to revisit for picture book authors and novelists (because of course, the end of your chapter does similar work to a picture book’s page turn!)

Page turns in picture books can be used to do amazing things, including:

• Show the passage of time

• Create humor

• Dictate pacing

Show the passage of time

Using page turns to show the passage of time is probably the usage that everybody is most familiar with. The story progresses as you turn the page, and with each page turn some time has elapsed.

In a book like Chicken Wants a Nap, only a few minutes may have elapsed between each page turn. (This is intentional in Chicken, because the pacing is part of what creates the humor. More on that below.)

But a page turn can also represent the passage of whole seasons, as we’ve seen in a number of picture books that quickly take us through Fall, Spring, Summer and Winter, or through years – as we’ve seen in a number of nonfiction biographies.

In every picture book, a page turn brings us forward in time – be it by a second or a decade.

Create humor

In Chicken Wants a Nap, the quick pacing of the page turns are vital for creating humor in the story. On the first spread, we’re introduced to Chicken and her primary goal – getting a nap.

The text reads:

“It’s a good day to be a chicken. The sun is up. The grass is warm. And Chicken wants a nap.”

Illustration by Monique Felix, used with permission

With a page turn though, everything shifts, and suddenly Chicken’s nap isn’t looking so likely. The next page reads:

“BACAWK!

It’s a bad day to be a chicken. The rain is falling. Her feathers are wet. Chicken cannot nap.”

Illustration by Monique Felix, used with permission

With each page turn, the tone of the story shifts – it’s a good day and Chicken’s problem is solved! It’s a bad day and Chicken’s solution is ruined. The humor needs a ‘pause’ in between each shift in order to work – and that pause would be completely lost if, for example, it was a good day on the left page and a bad day on the right page of a full spread. (More on the pause later!)

Page turns can also bring the humor in escalation – particularly when you’re working in the traditional picture book structure of three tries and fails until a success.

With each attempt, there should always be an escalation. So if a character wants to build a sandcastle, they’d start with a shovel, move on to a bucket and then maybe end with a bulldozer. And each escalation would come with a page turn – a pause to sit with the character’s current idea before the surprise on the next page.

Dictate pacing

One of my favorite spreads in Chicken Wants a Nap is the one where Chicken is interrupted by the cow. In the art, Monique Felix has Chicken on the left side of the page looking oh-so-annoyed, and the cow has its head turned towards her.

Illustration by Monique Felix, used with permission

In this spread, the art is subtly telling the reader to linger by having the cow turned away from the bottom right corner and instead back towards the page that’s already been read. It asks the reader to take just one more good look at that chicken (and her hilarious body language!)

In this way, the artwork puts a “pause” on turning the page, and those two work in tandem with the text to help dictate the pace of the story. I even subconsciously find myself reading this and the following pages a bit more slowly, as they’re paced differently to give us a big, full spread, emotional beat the next time Chicken cannot nap. (Take a read from your local bookstore or library to see what I mean!)

Formatting page turns in manuscripts

When I’m writing my own work or editing a client’s picture book, I like to think of page turns as a “beat” of their own.

When I submit picture book manuscripts, I don’t include spread numbers, because I know that the publisher’s design team will work those out on their own.

But when formatting a manuscript, I think it’s safe to give a little “nudge” by how you break down the text itself. (Usually this means separating intended spreads with an extra space between lines – so you create a pause yourself while an editor or agent reads.)