Research is hard!

Ok so far I am meant to be researching into my dissertation as well as having a concept module that runs very closely to the dissertation. They are running so closely that I am getting confused what I got to do for each! For my dissertation I thought I had it sorted out, plans and everything but that was soon turned on its head. Original Plan:

Question – ‘What makes a children fiction book for 4-7 year olds attractive enough for it to become a best seller?’

For this I was going to explore what a children’s picture book is but then move onto why it is hard to get into the industry. Brushing up on potential trends, influences that effect the sales. Moving on to then comparing a couple of top selling books and seeing why they are popular etc

However, after emailing numerous people and companies when I went to my tutorial the plan was changed. I find I struggle with major changes especially when I thought I got my head around this question I thought I knew where I was heading and actually started to write drafts of my work. However, after some advice I was told to focus even further by looking at books that have uncommon facts in them. This was suggested due to me already creating a different book called Snodsbury’s Snail Trail where he learns facts about animals that you wouldn’t normally know.

So now I need to find books that teach facts about things; but I don’t want any normal fact finding book I want to find ones that have a gist of a story within it. So after spending all day in 2 libraries I chose the following books:

Books written in the 1990’s:

A Ruined House – Mick Manning

Stellaluna – Janell Cannon

Chomp! Munch! Chew! – Karen Wallace and Ross Collins

Books written from 2000:

Harris Finds his feet – Catherine Rayner

Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears – Emily Gravett

Yucky Worms – Vivian French and Jessica Ahlberg

I have focused the criteria on books that have uncommon knowledge based on animals. Over the next couple of weeks I am going to look into:

• ​​compare, contrast and analyse each book
• See what other people have said about the books
• See if any aspects of the older books are shown in the new books

For the concept project I am going to:

• ​Use the books for the other project and analyse them in detail
• Research into how artists work – when creating a book

I am going to try and just purely research during these two weeks as I found there’s no point getting ahead of myself like before as I will waste more time doing things that may be useless. This whole bonanza is a lot harder than I imagined! I thought I could cope with it alright like I did with the BA but this is a different level. I think there is going to be a lot more extreme highs and lows then I anticipated!