"Chapter book", "novel"

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>If it ain't poetry and it fills a book, it's a "novel," ....

It may be that the defining characteristic of a "novel" in this sense is
its lack of illustrations.

The young students using "novel" = "book" have seen a few books already.
They've 'read' comics. They've glanced at their high school textbooks ...
which are crammed with color pictures, right? And then, just once, long
ago, there was that other book, which Grandma was reading ... no pictures
inside, just a big mass of text ... what did she call it again? Oh yes, a
novel.

For comparison: a young person (age maybe 6) a few years ago told me about
the "chapter book". This was defined by the child as "a book with few or no
pictures"; typically this was apparently a novel or story (or maybe another
narrative such as a biography), with chapters. It was something the older
persons might read: if you thumbed through it, you'd see the text broken up
not by the customary pictures but rather by "Chapter ..." in big print here
and there.

Google shows thousands of examples of "chapter book" at a glance.
Apparently this is a conventional designation for a type of children's
book, apparently usually in opposition to "picture book". In some cases
"novel" is distinguished from "chapter book", the novel presumably being
more advanced.

-- Doug Wilson