Did you ever think about why a book looks the way it does?

The Shape

The Lion’s Share is a square book. It’s designed to match the shape of the cake the lion serves for desert.

 

 

The Panels

Many of the pages in The Lion’s Share are divided into smaller sections, called panels. The size and shape of the panels are designed to help tell the story.

For example, in this spread the lion offers the cake to the elephant. The elephant cuts it in half and passes it on. The panels on the pages also get cut in half, just like the cake.

Cutting the cake

This happens again, a couple pages later. As the animals take their slices, each panel matches the size and shape of their piece of cake.

Background squares

Squares are also part of the patterns in the illustrations, especially in the backgrounds. In the second part of the book, the animals promise to bake more and more cakes. As the number of cakes increases, the number of panels doubles and the size of each panel gets cut in half.

Your turn!

There are plenty of other places where the book’s design follows a square pattern, and elements double and get cut in half. Can you find them?