Comic Book Templates and Guidelines

The 100 First Children’s Books guideline offers recommendations for “first collection” of children’s literature. It is intended for Read@Home and other early reading programs involved in the development and/or selection of books to support children’s pre-reading and early reading skills.

To support the development of the books suggested in the guideline, Read@Home has also created a series of InDesign templates for designers. Each template contains two parts:
• An InDesign Master Template in the proper trim size, with pre-created parent pages for ease of use.
• A PDF Users’ Guide to aid designers working with the templates.

Comic Template
• This template includes panel layouts for sequential storytelling.
• Its user guide also includes more detailed information about developing comic books, as their process is more complex than standard narrative books.

Important Notes
The trim sizes for these templates were selected by Blue Tree Group.
• They are based on cost-effectiveness for offset print runs of 10k+, on coated paper for the brightest color
reproduction.
• Print runs between 2500 and 10k are generally printed in a sheet machine with no cut-off feed, thus trim size
also plays a minor role in cost.
• Print runs under 2500 are generally most affordable when printed digitally on-demand, thus trim size is a less critical cost factor.

Suggestions about procurement, cover and paper weight, and other helpful topics are available at the Early Literacy Resource Network.