Picturebooks
Read All Over
On 20, Dec 2015 | In Picturebooks | By Chris Vitale
Kaplan, Deborah. “Read All Over: Postmodern Resolution in Macaulay’s Black and White.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 28.1 (Spring 2003): 37–41.
Referrer: Carrie Hintz
Categories: picturebook, visual storytelling, art, illustration, text/image relationship, color codes, Black and White, postmodernism
Annotation:
Kaplan explores the narrative techniques found in David Macaulay’s award winning picture book Black and White. Kaplan points out that “Layout, text, narrative, and color are all used in non-conventional ways.” Breaking the codified nature of color codes in picture books, Kaplan points out that Macaulay is able to add complexity to his narrative. The text is also juxtaposed to other texts that do similar work such as Nothing but the Truth and A Pale View of Hills. The deconstructive nature of Black and White, as well as these other texts, allows an insertion of meaning into the narrative that challenges what reader’s have come to expect and understand from the experience of a picture book.
