genre
Ways of the Illustrator
On 20, Dec 2015 | In Picturebooks | By Chris Vitale
Schwarcz, Joseph. H. Ways of the Illustrator: Visual Communication in Children’s Literature. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982. Print.
Referrer: Chris Vitale
Categories: picture theory, visual language, definitions, image/text, illustrated books, visual storytelling, genre
Annotation:
Schwarcz does a deep dive into the visual language found in picture books and more broadly children’s literature. This early exploration of the relationship between text and illustration takes color, representation, shape, and emotional experience into consideration. Maurice Sendak, Ezra Jack Keats, and Virginia Burton are areas of inquiry for the author as the picture books they created are of particular interest. Each one represents a mastery of interplay between the two commanding elements. Schwarcz looks at the mood and psychological impact of words and pictures as well.
Words About Pictures
On 20, Dec 2015 | In Picturebooks | By Chris Vitale
Nodelman, Perry. Words About Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children’s Picture Books. Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1988. Print.
Referrer: Chris Vitale
Categories: picture theory, visual language, definitions, image/text, illustrated books, visual storytelling, genre
Annotation:
This text is the seminal work regarding the relationship between pictures and text in picture books. The examination that is done by Nodelman stretches in the intricacy and specialty associated with the aesthetic and literary primary source material found in the corpus of children’s picture books. Nodelman explores a range of text that spans well-known story’s like Where the Wild Things Are to more generic alphabet books. The picture book’s use of visual illustration is explored in depth. The significance of the pictorial elements of the text is brought into the limelight for one of the first times in children’s literary study. Of particular interest are the chapters regarding the relationships between multiple visual objects (Chapter 5) as well as visual objects in relation to the text (Chapter 7).
Understanding comics
On 20, Dec 2015 | In Picturebooks | By Chris Vitale
McCloud, S. Understanding comics: The invisible art. New York: Harper Collins (1994).
Referrer: Chris Vitale
Categories: picturebook, visual storytelling, comics, illustration, iconology, genre, definitions
Annotation:
McCloud created a comic book that acts as a guide to reading comic books. In depth descriptions regarding visual iconography, the definitions associated with the genre, as well as the way that text and illustration are interdependent and related is the main focus of the text. The book acts as a reference point for reading both comics and other illustrated forms of literature. The dynamics between psychology and color are given fair attention. McCloud’s text is an overall analysis of the medium of comic books. By building a reference guide to illustrated literature as a piece of illustrated literature, McCloud achieves a referential work that defines and explains the importance of the multimodal narrative.
