Red Paper Books

Snap­drag­ons is part of the ever expand­ing Oxford Read­ing Tree (ORT) from Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press. Usu­ally ORT book sto­ries cen­tre around the Biff and Chip char­ac­ters, with con­sis­tent art­work and type. Not so the Snap­drag­ons branch of the tree. We were com­mis­sioned to pro­duce 60 titles, in 10 lev­els or stages, using a wide vari­ety of artists, type­faces, lay­outs and for­mats to moti­vate and stim­u­late read­ers. Though clearly lev­eled to pro­vide a pro­gres­sion through the series, each title had to be an inter­est­ing book to pick-up and read for its own sake.

Artists: Jan McCaf­ferty, Sue Hen­dra, Jim Kavanagh, Joanne Par­tis, Ian Cun­liffe, Colin Mier

The books in stage 1 had very few words! The art­work needed to be clear, fun and bright. At this level the text was always placed at top left of the spread, but because this was Snap­drag­ons we were allowed to use a vari­ety of approved type faces.