Uncategorized
Visual Images in Children’s Picture Books.
On 20, Dec 2015 | In Uncategorized | By Chris Vitale
Kiefer, Barbara Z. “Visual Images in Children’s Picture Books.” Shattering the Looking Glass: Challenge, Risk, and Controversy in Children’s Literature. Ed. Susan S. Lehr. Norwood: Christopher-Gordon, 2008. Print.
Referrer: Chris Vitale
Categories: picturebook, visual storytelling, comics, digitization, mass production, printing process, postmodernism, audience
Annotation:
Kiefer begins by working to define children’s picture books as more than a 20th century creation, but rather an integrated aesthetic experience consisting of concepts and images that has been around for much longer. Kiefer assigns art the ability of creating meaning. The gut of Kiefer’s article explores the form and formats of the picture book as it evolved from sequential illustrated picture books, comic strips, graphic novels, to nonsequential fiction and nonfiction in the picture book. All of these formats have widened the audience for the form of the picture book. Technological developments, such as woodblock versus moveable type, computers, laser scanners, and color separation are given their due credit for creating the possibilities of mass-produced picture books. Media developments like black-and-white to full color, computer generated to mixed media, have also had a profound effect on the picture book. Most compelling is Kiefer’s discussion of the effect new topics has had on the form. Kiefer discusses the emergence of dark comedy, complex emotional issues, and postmodern conceptualizations of the form. In this review of visual images in children’s literature, Kiefer does a thorough job of providing work that exemplifies the points she is making.
Weaving Words and Pictures
On 20, Dec 2015 | In Uncategorized | By Chris Vitale
Desai, Christina M. “Weaving Words and Pictures: Allen Say and the Art of Illustration.” The Lion and the Unicorn 28.3 (Sept. 2004): 408–28.
Referrer: Carrie Hintz
Categories: picturebook, visual storytelling, art, illustration, graphic art, text/image relationship, perspective, meaning
Annotation:
In an effort to position the study of illustrations found in children’s literature as a legitimate element for inquiry, Desai explores a handful of fictional works. To explore the subtleties of illustration, Desai examines three books illustrated by Allen Say: Dianne Snyder’s The Boy of the Three-Year Nap (1988), and Say’s El Chino (1990) and Emma’s Rug (1996). The relationship between text and illustration is read through its work as visual narrative, illustrated cues, as well as perspective and meaning. Graphic art is shown to be a central driving force and fundamentally necessary element of the story in illustrated picture books.
