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Children’s Illustration
We follow the same guidelines for describing images in Children's Illustrations as we do for Medium Images.
More often than not, an Children's Illustrated Book will heavily describe the image in the surrounding text.
If the image is described in surrounding text, you still need to describe the image.
Give a brief overview of the image to support the description in the surrounding text without repeating what is already described. If there are details in the image that are not mentioned in the surrounding text you can add them to your description if they are useful to your audience.
This is a great example of how influential context can be!
<important note>We treat all images in Children’s Books like Medium Images. If they are not described in the surrounding text, follow the instructions on Medium Images.</note>
Examples
In this first example, the surrounding text gives us a very robust description. Here is a sample of this text. The scuba gear is mentioned earlier in the book, and are in earlier images, so we don’t have to describe them here. The shapes under the water are mentioned in the surrounding text. Also, as this is later in the book so the characters should already have been described, so we only need to use their names!
…voice—a little muffled behind her mask. “But it’d be way less dark if you opened your eyes.”
“Flea!” Bee groped around until she found her
friend. “Bring me back up. This place is terrible.”
“Terrible? More like terrific,” Flea said. “Just take a look.”
Bee squinted one eye open … just a little.
“There you go,” Flea said encouragingly.
Bee opened another eye. The puddle was dim, but some sunlight filtered down. Its hazy rays lit up an array of yellow, red, and green shapes that floated at different levels like streamers and confetti.
“Like the decor?” Flea grinned.
Each floating shape was as unique as a snowflake. Some were webbed like nets…
[Alt-text] Flea leads Bee down into the dark water past the different shapes. Bee closes her eyes tight with a deep frown. Flea looks forward with wide eyes and a big open smile.
I add a few details not in the surrounding text that are in the image (their facial expressions). Remember alt-text replaces an image with text, so we want to make sure we are sticking to the facts and describing what we see in the image and not our interpretation of it. Allow the opportunity for interpretation with the reader
In the next example, the character's name, physical description, and the description of the tree and carving appear in the surrounding text.
[Alt-text]Mona stands at the base of the tree looking up at the heart. She reaches up to it with one hand.
