Evaluating Picture Books

The Story Time Secrets: Resources for Sharing Books with Kids blog has a great post today about “10 Tips for Evaluating Picture Books.”  I feel as though I’ve read a lot of middle grade novels and know (at least for myself) what works and doesn’t work – character development, setting, plot, etc.  But for whatever reason, I have a huge problem evaluating picture books.  Maybe due to it’s short length, maybe how the illustrations and words go together, whatever the reason, I end of describing a picture book as “cute”.  Which according to Story Time Secrets is Tip #6 – “Eliminate ‘cute’ from your vocabulary” is not what I should be doing.  Rather I should focus on using terms that describe both the function and form of the story rather than generic words that describe the book as a whole.
I’m going to think about these ten tips, give myself more time to evaluate picture books, even though they are short, they still require time to evaluate and hopefully post more reviews of picture books on my own blog.  I’ve read a number of new picture books coming through out library’s processing department.  Maybe I’ll give this a go for tomorrow.  Wish me luck!