If you are considering attempting a children's book, you must enter an alternate world, one loaded with different styles. Is your book aimed at toddlers and under fives with a picture or board book, or a novel for teenagers? There are different rules to follow for every age group. If your dream is to become a successful author for children, you will need to know how to step into the mind of a child and market your work correctly.

It also pays to be familiar with how publishers classify children's books as set out in the following list:

Board books: Newborn to age 3

Picture books: Ages 3–8

Coloring and activity books: Ages 3–8

Novelty books: Ages 3 and up, depending on content

Early, levelled readers: Ages 5–9

First chapter books: Ages 6–9 or 7–10

Middle-grade books: Ages 8–12

Young adult (YA) novels: Ages 12 and up or 14 and up

TIPS FOR EDITING YOUR CHILDREN'S BOOK

Sooner or later, after you have a strong draft of the children's book you're thinking of, you are ready to begin editing. Here's a quick overview of the most important points to focus on.

If a sentence doesn't add to the plot or character improvement, erase it.

Make all your characters individual and unique. Make them recognisable by the language they use.

If you have more than a page of dialogue, then it needs to be separated by some action. Otherwise, it will lose the child's attention.

When changing place or time in the story, provide a quick transition to keep the story moving smoothly.

Ensure the pace of each action keeps moving in every scene and chapter.

If you need to use a capital letter or exclamation marks in your work, you are probably not writing creatively enough.

When you can discover a single word to replace at least two words, do it.

Be cautious with changing tenses midstream. In the event that your story is told in the previous tense, stay with it all through. Do not change tenses mid-sentence as this again will confuse your reader.

Be mindful of overusing adjectives and adverbs and your descriptive pages must be kept short.

After you pick a perspective for a character, stick to it. If your character hasn't changed toward the finish of your story, odds are his personality needs some work.

If your character converses with himself or completes a great deal of pondering out loud, you need to create a companion for him.

If you wind up overwriting because you're experiencing difficulty communicating precisely what you mean, kick back and say what you want out loud and then make another attempt at it.

TIPS FOR WRITING BOOKS FOR YOUNGER CHILDREN

The rules for writing a book aimed at under eight-year-olds differs slightly.

Bad characters never win.

The main character must end up as the winner at the end of the story.

All characters ought to have both great traits and shortcomings.

Little characters must triumph over stronger ones.

Words like poopoo, peepee, tushies, passing gas and burping are comical to children.

Turning normal situations topsy-turvy is acceptable as long as those situations make sense the right way round.

Regular children can perform exceptional accomplishments.

Regular children can go on unlikely missions endorsed (or not) by grown-ups in control.

WHAT NOT TO DO WHEN WRITING CHILDREN'S BOOKS

Write books that lecture or address.

Talk down to youngsters as though they're little dumb grown-ups.

Write books that have no genuine story (nor a plot with starting, centre, end).

Use illustrations that are absolutely wrong for the story or the other way around.

Pack picture books with too much text.

Pack true to life books with an excessive amount of content and few visuals.

Create characters who are exhausting or superfluous to the improvement of the story.

Create principle characters who have an issue they don't settle themselves or who don't change over the span of the story.