Children’s book genres: An art, not a science
https://i0.wp.com/www.writerandthewolf.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Painting-the-town-green-1-20.png?fit=1024%2C683&ssl=1 1024 683 Siobhan O'Brien Holmes Siobhan O'Brien Holmes https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e13fe604611de8ab95f8fa1e5862d0115e805367dd2bb462c28ba4013cebfee7?s=96&d=mm&r=gThis is part seven of my serialisation of my kidilt genre course Space opera, steampunk and slashers, oh my! I’ll be sharing the content here every week over the coming months but you can grab the full course now if you just can’t wait! Read on for lessons with videos and transcripts.
Set the mood
Don’t get so hung up on genre definitions and tropes that you forget to think about the feel of your book. What vibes will it give readers? What’s the overall tone? When they curl up to read your book, how are they going to feel? If you made a mood board for your book, what would the aesthetic be?
Let’s say your book focuses on a love story between two witches so you label it horror because witches are often the domain of supernatural horror. But if the book isn’t written with the intention of being scary or unsettling and instead has romantic, sweet and hopeful vibes, horror fans won’t really be getting what they want.
Instead, you’ve written a romance novel that happens to be about witches so you could call it fantasy romance and that will give readers a much better idea of what they’re going to get from your book and you’ll attract romance fans instead of horror fans.
Make a mood board for your book either on Pinterest or on paper. What sort of book does it look like from the images you’ve chosen? Try showing it to somebody who doesn’t know anything about your manuscript. What genre would they guess it is?
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