Standardize the font and spacing. The accepted industry standard is 12-point size Times New Roman font. Courier is a less-accepted font alternative. Avoid fonts with curlicues or hard-to-read embellishments. You want your words to stand out, and not the font they're written in.
Double-space your manuscript, and use a 1-inch margin all around the pages. Indent paragraphs. Don't get fancy with spacing. If your children's novel is accepted by a publisher, the publisher will decide how the text should look on the page.
Format the header. At the top of every page, you should include your last name and some words from the title of your manuscript. For example: TUCKER/NOVEL FORMAT. This information goes in the upper header, on the left side of the page. Manuscripts are never stapled. They're usually bound with a clip. The information on the top of every page is there so that in case some of your manuscript pages get separated from the rest of the manuscript, the agent or editor will know who and what they belong to.
Include the page number in the header on the right-hand side of every page.
Identify your chapters. Each chapter should begin on a new page, with the text starting one-third of the way down from the top of the page. This large amount of space signals a new chapter. There's no standard on whether to number your chapters or give them titles. When it comes to that, do whatever feels right for your children's novel.
Perfect the title page. The title page is the most important part of your children's novel manuscript. This is the page that will be seen by the most people, and agents and editors often base their acceptance or rejection of your work on this single page. The text of your manuscript should begin about halfway down the first page. Above this, the title should be in all capital letters, centered on the page. Two lines below the title, the word "BY" should be in all caps, centered. Another two lines down should be the author's name. Two lines after that, begin the text of your children's novel.
At the top of the page, on the left-hand side, include your contact information. On the right-hand side, include the word count of your manuscript.