Mentor text Referral: Guessing Game picture Books

​What gives a picture book more allure?
A guessing game: your format cure!

Guessing game picture books are a big hit with young readers. These interactive books allow kids to make a guess, then turn the page to discover if they are correct. Guessing game books also lend themselves perfectly to rhyme. When the last word of the question and the subsequent answer are a rhyming pair, readers get a clue to the solution.

I first learned about this picture book format at a Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators conference. Miranda Paul was speaking about her upcoming book, Whose Hands are These? A Community Helper’s Guessing Book (Illustrated by Luciana Navarro Powell, Millbrook Press, 2016.) Each spread of this book shows different hands in action and asked readers to guess which community helper the hands belong to.

​The key to a successful guessing game picture book? Fresh and clever end rhymes. Readers enjoy rhyming answers that are guessable but not too predictable or cliché. Miranda does this well in Whose Hands are These? Here's an example from the book where Miranda rhymes two words that have rarely, if ever, been paired in a picture book, panic and mechanic:

​Recently, I discovered another charming guessing game book, Look and Listen: Who’s in the Garden, Meadow or Brook, by Dianne White, illustrated by Amy Schimler-Safford. (Margaret Ferguson Books, 2022.) Look and Listen takes readers on a nature journey, from a back yard garden and to increasingly wild places. Along the way, readers are given sensory clues to different critters. Look and Listen also engages readers with fresh and clever end rhymes, as in the pairing of follow with swallow on these pages: 

Notice that Dianne also uses alliteration (cheer song calls) and assonance (a bright, WHITE-bellied diving) to enhance the lyrical, read-aloud nature of the text. (For more information on the power of these literary devices see the HOUSE CALLS post on alliteration (upcoming) and assonance.)

​If you’re a picture book writer looking for a way to make your manuscript more engaging, a guessing game format might be the answer you’ve been seeking.

-RHYME DOCTOR Michelle Schaub