Picturebooks
Illustrations, Text, and the Child Reader
On 20, Dec 2015 | In Picturebooks | By Chris Vitale
Fang, Zhihui. “Illustrations, Text, and the Child Reader: What are the pictures in Children’s Storybooks for?” Reading Horizons 37.2 (1996): 130-142.
Referrer: Carrie Hintz
Categories: picturebook, visual storytelling, publishing, printing process, history of picturebooks, child readers, picturebook psychology
Annotation:
This article discusses the relationship between the illustration and the reader. The explicit purpose of the paper is to “delineate the main functions of illustrations in relation to the text in picture books and to examine the significance of illustrations to the child reader.” Art argued to work as a tool for storytelling as opposed to a decoration. The work being done includes establishing the setting of the story, definition and development of the characters, as an arm to extend and develop the narrative story, alter and augment the perspective of the reader, add understanding, and reaffirm elements of the narrative. After positing the previous, the author goes into a lightly psychological overview of the effect of illustrations for child readers. Illustrations are concluded to be an essential narrative device for developing readers. The interplay of text and illustration is also concluded to be supplementary for young readers.
