visual story telling
Radical Change Theory and Synergistic Reading for Digital Age Youth
On 21, Dec 2015 | In Picturebooks | By Chris Vitale
Dresang, Eliza T., and Bowie Kotrla. ‘‘Radical Change Theory and Synergistic Reading for Digital Age Youth.’’ The Journal of Aesthetic Education 43 (2009): 92-107.
Referrer: Chris Vitale
Categories: radical change theory, picturebooks, Black and White, visual story telling, digital picturebooks
Annotation:
Dresang and Kotrla begin by discussing radical change theory in relation to the award-winning extended length picture book The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Dresang notes that this text is an indication of the changing nature of books in response to “digital age youth.” The changing reader is one that is now concerned with interactivity, connectivity, and access. Radical Change Theory dictates that books must becomes more sophisticated in order to keep up with the demand of it’s changing audience. An important part of this article is the discussion of “Changing Children.” The preconceptions we have about children and childhood are rapidly changing into more complex and ambiguously defined identifications. By acknowledging Radical Change Theory, we can more accurately assess books created in the digital age or for the generation of people consuming this type of media. Aesthetic experiences must be responsive to what the youth demands.
Visual Narrativity in the Picture Book
On 21, Dec 2015 | In Picturebooks | By Chris Vitale
Wesseling, Elisabeth. “Visual Narrativity in the Picture Book: Heinrich Hoffman’s Der Struwwelpeter.” Children’s Literature in Education 35.4 (Dec. 2004): 319–45.
Referrer: Carrie Hintz
Categories: visual story telling, picturebooks, color theory, image/text, irony, layout
Annotation:
Wesseling immediately argues, “Both words and images make their own relatively autonomous contribution to the overall semantic, aesthetic and emotional effect of the picture book. Therefore, it has often been observed that the picture book is closer to other mixed narrative forms such as drama or film than to verbal fiction.” Channeling Nodelman, Wesseling dives into a reading of Der Struwwelpeter, oder lustige Geschichten und drollige Bilder that is focused on word and image interaction. This close reading of the text and images garners observations regarding the representations, visual storytelling, and textual augmentation of the illustrations. The construction and layout of pages in relation to rhyming is discussed and categorized as Visual Rhymes. This abstract perspective on visual structure is valuable for thinking about the implications of layout in distant reading picturebooks.
