Caroline Wakeman

Caroline Wakeman has over 20 years of experience creating award-winning children’s book content with countless top publishers, internationally. As one of the founders of Advocate Art Illustration Agency, over 25 years ago, and now CEO of Caroline Wakeman Literary Agency, she is skilled at marrying artwork and text to create the perfect synergy. Her notable successes have won awards and regularly become Amazon Best Sellers. She also authored her own early chapter book series, Verity Fairy, so appreciates the fine balance of creative input with the pressure of deadlines. She truly enjoys working with like-minded authors and illustrators who share the same passion of bringing immersive and imaginative content to market through young literature.

What I’m looking for in a picture book. . .

Picture books are a beautiful synergy of artwork and text, but it takes skill to create this fine balance and master. They are also instrumental to assisting a child in learning to read, as a lot of the storyline is told within the pictures. It’s a common misconception that writing a children’s picture book is easy because of the low word count. In fact, it’s incredibly hard because every word counts – there’s no room for waffle or surplus words! A classic picture book will remain so for generations and the hours of enjoyment it brings is priceless. The themes and topics which are popular in today’s market are quite different from just 5 years ago. Some of the common requests we receive from publishers are storylines which gently point to diversity, friendship, inclusivity and other SEL (social emotional learning) issues. Humour is always popular as well as ‘soft-learning’, it’s important to remember that picture books need to appeal to both the child and the adult. After all, the child may be the critic but the adult is the buyer! 

You can find more details about the Caroline Wakeman Literary Agency here: carolinewakeman.com

Twitter: @CWLAgency
Twitter: @Caroline_write