Behind the Book

Our books are special because we co-produce them. People with learning disabilities, or people with lived experience of the subject, are part of every stage of creating our stories.

We also work with people with expertise in the subject, including clinicians, teachers, other charities, and many more. This means the pictures in our stories are truly representative of what someone's experience in real life might look like.

All Books Beyond Words are trialled by up to 100 people with learning disabilities before they ever make it into print. The process of creation takes anywhere from twelve to eighteen months. You can learn all about what it takes to create our stories below.

How does a Book Beyond Words get created?

First, our editorial board decides on a subject that needs a story. There are lots of ways we choose a story, from seeing what our readers would like to see next, to being approached about something important by another person or organisation.

Next, we work to find a group of co-authors and an artist who can bring the story to life. Our authors are carefully chosen, making sure we involve a person with a learning disability who has lived experience of the story we're writing, as well as experts who are involved in the subject, and our own staff. For a book about a medical condition, we might involve doctors or nurses who deal with that condition, as well as a person who has the condition.

The authors and artist then come together to decide on what the important parts of the story are. For our book about home safety, Getting Help with Gas, our authors decided that it was important to talk about identifying people who may ask for access to the home, so we included a storyline about door-to-door scammers.

The artist then takes away the storyline, creating a rough storyboard of the different parts of the story and inventing the characters who will be part of it. When the co-authors have had a look through the pictures and decided they are a good representation of the storyline, the artist then goes away and creates the first set of pictures for trialling: the black and white roughs.

Black and white roughs

The black and white roughs tell the story without colour, but with the story and characters mapped out. They are then checked by our group of co-authors. Sometimes they change the order of the pictures, or add more, or take some away, to make sure the story makes sense. When everyone is happy, the story then moves to the next stage: colour pictures.

Colour pictures

Our artist goes away and adds colour, as well as making whatever changes need to be made to the story. When the authors and artist are happy, we send the story out to lots of different people, often with learning disabilities, and sometimes part of a community the book is relevant to. When we created A Refugee's Story, we asked lots of asylum seekers and refugees to tell us what they thought of the story.

We ask someone close to the group or person to read the story with them, taking notes on what they see in every picture. Sometimes, people see different things to what we first intended - this is okay! Because someone is interpreting a picture story through their own experiences, their story may look a little different. As long as the main themes of the story are still understood, people bringing their own lives to reading is all part of the magic of picture stories.

The notes are then sent back to us, and our co-authors and artist. They look at all the feedback and decide whether there are any more changes needed, then finalise the colour pictures, and are nearly finished with the book!

Resources for readers

The next stage is to develop written resources that can direct people towards important resources, or helpful tools, related to the story. In a book about grief, this might be where someone can access bereavement support, or free resources that can help. Our authors collaborate on this to identify things they think may be helpful to include.

Then all that is left is to give the book a name. The names of our books are usually taken from what people who have trialled the books have said about them, making sure that they are easy to understand for everyone.

After that, the book is finished, and ready to be printed and launched.

As you can see, our process is long, which is why it sometimes takes us a long time to create a new book. But by working with people with learning disabilities or lived experience, we create books that last a long time - and can be read by all sorts of people. Pictures are a shared language, and storytelling is how we develop our emotional wellbeing, so it's important to make our stories as strong as possible.

Want to find out how to be involved in our trialling, or how to start reading books with a group near you? Why not join a Book Club near you - or create your own?