Words as levees against the flood
Jun. 2nd, 2009 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timerippleI am newly returned from a good trip to Borders and an ill-fated trip to the library. I bought my very own shiny and strokable copy of The Demon’s Lexicon (because it is June 2 yay!), plus a copy of Where the Wild Things Are (because... well, no-one should need a reason to have a copy of Where the Wild Things Are, but if you must know there was a discount for purchases over $25). Then I hastened to the library, the minutes to closing time ticking down...
ME (to self): Hmm. This book, which the online catalog claims is available, does not appear to be anywhere in the room.
ME: *wanders around looking helpless* Three... two... one...
CUTE MALE YA LIBRARIAN: Can I help you?
ME: Why, yes. I’m looking for City of Ashes by Cass-
CMYAL: It’s right over he... huh, no it’s not, that’s strange.
ME: *Smile of Icy Agreement*
CMYAL: Would it help if I told you we have twenty copies of the next book on order?
ME: ...Maybe.
He didn’t get the Smile of Icy Death because he was well-informed and kinda cute, and besides I was feeling exceedingly mellow after my success at Borders.
But apparently my fairy is an Asking for Missing Books Which Were Not Previously Known to Be Missing fairy, which would be terrifically useful if I were a librarian. By which you may also deduce that I have recently read How to Ditch Your Fairy, about which I will talk some other time. In the meantime, please enjoy some of my long-promised thoughts on some picturebooks.
One of my classes last semester was on picturebooks, so they’ve been on my mind a lot lately. As a reader and a critic, I’m so invested in words that I initially had difficulty even talking about pictures, let alone analyzing their narrative role. Now, although my appreciation has increased exponentially and I have a bunch of shiny new vocabulary, I still feel like I have a lot to learn.
What’s a picturebook? This is actually a more complicated question than you might think-- certainly more complicated than I thought. From a practical standpoint, picturebooks are usually (but not always) 32 pages long (this figure may or may not include endpapers, copyright page, and so forth). According to the Caldecott Award guidelines, “A ‘picture book for children’ as distinguished from other books with illustrations, is one that essentially provides the child with a visual experience. A picture book has a collective unity of story-line, theme, or concept, developed through the series of pictures of which the book is comprised.”
This, like many of the Caldecott guidelines, is not all that helpful. But it’s a start: a picturebook is a book in which pictures play a large role in telling the story (or imparting information-- there are some terrific nonfiction picturebooks!).
Somewhat more helpfully for my purposes, in his excellent and informative Words About Pictures Uri Shulevitz outlines the distinction between picturebooks and storybooks. “A story book tells a story with words. Although the pictures amplify it, the story can be understood without them... In contrast, a true picture book tells a story mainly or entirely with pictures. When words are used, they have an auxiliary role. ... In a picture book, the pictures extend, clarify, complement, or take the place of words. ... Picture books are ‘written’ with pictures as much as they are written with words.” (15-16)
Personally I find that this distinction can get a bit slippery, especially when it comes to fairy-tale retellings that use the original text. But it’s an important one to keep in mind.
I have to confess that I have always had a Secret Weakness for gorgeously illustrated fairy-tale retellings, be they storybooks or picturebooks proper. I think the various fairy tale/myth books illustrated by Kinuko Craft, for example, are guilty of being vehicles for art, and not particularly good as picturebooks. Nobody reads those books for the interplay between text and art; the art completely overwhelms the text, which tends to be rather bland anyway. (There’s an interesting article, “Visual Literacy,” that bewails the tendency to publish just such books.) But the art is so pretty I love them anyway.
A couple of books I grew up with and don’t have in front of me to talk about are David Delamare’s Cinderella and Charles Santore’s The Little Mermaid. The illustrations are absolutely stunning; I can’t really comment on their effectiveness as picturebooks, but I love the art. Oh! And Susan Jeffers, of course-- I’d probably find her obsession with detail and borders distracting now, but as a child I loved them. I had three of hers-- Beauty and the Beast; Brother Eagle, Sister Sky; and The First Friend. Princess Furball, illustrated by Anita Lobel, is another one I really liked.
An artist I wish I’d grown up knowing about is Trina Schart Hyman. She won the Caldecott medal for Little Red Riding Hood, and her Snow White is gorgeous and much more sensual than Nancy Erkholm Burkert’s version (which is also quite lovely). She’s also done some Arthurian retellings and fairy books, and there’s something about her use of line and color that really appeals to me. Also in the category of Gorgeous Fairy Tale Retellings I Wish I’d Known About is Paul O. Zelinsky-- Rapunzel and Rumpelstiltskin, among others. I wrote a five-page paper about how the opening spread of Rumpelstiltskin is all about problematizing the notion of heroism in the story. Look, I’m a grad student, it’s my job to do stuff like that, okay?
Let’s talk about Maurice Sendak for a minute. Where the Wild Things Are is often cited as the perfect picturebook, the epitome of what the form can do, sophisticated in illustration and rich in psychological meaning. I love the heck out of it. Oddly enough, as a child I hated it, but I was a ridiculously prim little thing given to irrational dislikes and also a phobia of monsters. I’m happy to report that these days the primness is something of a facade, and I have a rather postmodern fondness for monsters. (Unfortunately I am still prone to irrational dislikes, but there seems nothing to be done about that.) The only two other Sendak books I’ve read-- In the Night Kitchen and Outside Over There-- are a bit bizarre, but wonderful. I think I must have read Outside Over There as a child, and some (but not all) of my love for it stems from the pleasure of recognition.
Also in the category of Classic Books Young Fiona Hated are the entire works of Dr. Seuss. Many of these are not so much picturebooks as illustrated early readers, but even today I can’t think of his visual style without being filled with a deep and visceral, almost physical, loathing. I’m sorry. I did say the tendency for irrational dislikes was still present.
On the other hand, I was for many years obsessed with the Berenstain Bears books, until I moved on to novels and looked back only for fairy tales.
...
The above comments have been mostly about artists whose work I grew up with, or wish I had. Now I’d like to say a few words about some of the books nominated for the Caldecott Award last year-- we were required to read them all, except ones that turned out to be ineligible (a surprising number). The Caldecott medal is awarded to the “most distinguished picturebook” published in the US in a given year. From what I gather, a lot of the committee debates center around the vagueness of the term “distinguished”.
Swanson, Susan Marie. The House in the Night, illustrated by Beth Krommes. Houghton Mifflin.
This is the book that won the Caldecott medal, and it has a very distinctive look to it. It’s the only nominated book this year to use scratchboard, which makes it really stand out. Some other lovely books in the past have used scratchboard-- one of my favorites is Sukey and the Mermaid (words by Robert San Souci), in which Brian Pinkney’s illustrations give the whole thing a thready, delicate, woven feel. The House in the Night is entirely in black and white, except for spot use of yellow which I find variably confusing or evocative. Some of the illustrations are only tangentially suggested by the words, which are spare and effective, thereby casting a lot of the burden of storytelling on the pictures. There’s a simplicity and strength to the book as a whole that I find very appealing. I liked some of the other nominees better, but I can see why the committee chose this one--it’s certainly one of the most visually interesting works of 2008.
Berger, Carin. The Little Yellow Leaf. Greenwillow.
“Simplicity and strength” are also keywords for Little Yellow Leaf, which would be, hands down, my choice for Most Distinguished Picturebook for (Young) Children. The vibrant collage is amazingly effective without being too busy or prohibitively intricate (more on that in a minute). Berger does some great things with visual perspective, and the colors are just beautiful. Collage often doesn’t appeal to me, but this book absolutely blew me away. Very simple, very effective.
Bryant, Jen. A River of Words, illustrated by Melissa Sweet. Eerdmans.
Another collage work, this one earned a well-deserved Caldecott Honor. I found the collages a bit too busy for my taste, the illustrated bits unappealing, but it’s impossible to deny the artist’s skill or the art’s role in expanding, enhancing, amplifying the text. The book is a biography of the doctor and poet William Carlos Williams, and the very physical, textured collages emphasize the text’s focus on poetry as an act of creation, of construction. It’s a gorgeous book, appropriate for an older age group than Little Yellow Leaf and definitely “distinguished”. Absolutely stunning.
Frazee, Marla. A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever. Harcourt.
Another Caldecott Honor book. I have a horrible, art-snobbish inhibition about calling this one “distinguished” per se in comparison to A River of Words or some of the other more “painterly” nominated works. Its comic-book-influenced style really just doesn’t appeal to me all that much. I’m sorry. I freely admit this about myself, and am trying hard to change my ways through curing my ignorance about comics.
That said, I love this book SO HARD. It’s funny, it’s ironic, it’s totally delightful. The illustrations are incredibly effective; Frazee’s simple but expressive figures have an energy to them that keeps the story barreling forward. But it’s really the interplay between text and pictures that drives the awesomeness. The pictures constantly undermine and contradict the text-- the constant irony is hilarious. Voted Most Likely to be Re-Read Umpteen Times and Cackled Over by the Committee of Yours Truly.
Shulevitz, Uri. How I Learned Geography. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
The third Caldecott Honor book this year, so I feel obliged to mention it. It’s lovely, but I’m afraid I really don’t have much else to say about it.
Thompson, Lauren. The Apple Pie That Papa Baked, illustrated by Jonathan Bean. Simon & Schuster.
This one wasn’t actually eligible, being published in 2007 rather than 2008, but I loved it. The red, brown, white and black illustrations have a lot of energy and warmth.
(Now I want pie, dammit.)
Nelson, Kadir. We Are the Ship: The Story of the Negro League Baseball. Jump at the Sun/Hyperion.
This is a pretty damn awesome book. Nelson utilizes the first person plural to talk about the history of Negro league baseball in a voice that’s intimate, chatty, and feels utterly genuine. The illustrations are gorgeous-- the oil portraits are incredibly evocative and convey a wealth of feeling. However, in my opinion this is an illustrated book rather than a picturebook.
Reibstein, Mark. Wabi Sabi, illustrated by Ed Young. Little Brown.
I mention this book chiefly so that I can use it to talk about the next book in line, though it’s quite nice to look at on its own. Rather than the conventional book construction, Wabi Sabi is bound so that it opens vertically, like a wall calendar. And more collage! There’s some incredible texture here, and it’s a lovely book. But there’s some doubt about whether it’s really for children-- is a child going to even care about the particulars of a philosophy, “a way of seeing the world” that “may best be understood as a feeling, rather than an idea”?
Rumford, James. Silent Music. Roaring Brook.
This book is about Arabic calligraphy, and the difficulty of peace. While the pictures can get a bit busy, the color is luminous and the text poignant (if a little manipulative).
Here comes the design rant. Arabic calligraphy, which reads right-to-left, presents an interesting challenge for a Western-style left-to-right picturebook. Sadly, this book utterly fails to address that challenge-- it’s designed just like any other conventional left-to-right picturebook. The result is that it’s almost impossible to physically get through the book-- once you read the text and look at the pictures (left-to-right) on each doublespread, you then look at the calligraphy (right-to-left) and end up back on the verso (left-hand) page rather than the recto and the page-turn (right-hand). This is a case where a calendar format like Wabi Sabi’s would be really great. In Wabi Sabi, the format doesn’t really contribute much other than to say “Hi! I’m different!” In Silent Music, it would have been of real use in overcoming a fundamental conflict between content and design conventions.
In conclusion, missed opportunities for awesomeness make me sad. :(
Fortunately I do not think The Demon’s Lexicon will contain many missed opportunities for awesomeness. I’m off to read!
ME (to self): Hmm. This book, which the online catalog claims is available, does not appear to be anywhere in the room.
ME: *wanders around looking helpless* Three... two... one...
CUTE MALE YA LIBRARIAN: Can I help you?
ME: Why, yes. I’m looking for City of Ashes by Cass-
CMYAL: It’s right over he... huh, no it’s not, that’s strange.
ME: *Smile of Icy Agreement*
CMYAL: Would it help if I told you we have twenty copies of the next book on order?
ME: ...Maybe.
He didn’t get the Smile of Icy Death because he was well-informed and kinda cute, and besides I was feeling exceedingly mellow after my success at Borders.
But apparently my fairy is an Asking for Missing Books Which Were Not Previously Known to Be Missing fairy, which would be terrifically useful if I were a librarian. By which you may also deduce that I have recently read How to Ditch Your Fairy, about which I will talk some other time. In the meantime, please enjoy some of my long-promised thoughts on some picturebooks.
One of my classes last semester was on picturebooks, so they’ve been on my mind a lot lately. As a reader and a critic, I’m so invested in words that I initially had difficulty even talking about pictures, let alone analyzing their narrative role. Now, although my appreciation has increased exponentially and I have a bunch of shiny new vocabulary, I still feel like I have a lot to learn.
What’s a picturebook? This is actually a more complicated question than you might think-- certainly more complicated than I thought. From a practical standpoint, picturebooks are usually (but not always) 32 pages long (this figure may or may not include endpapers, copyright page, and so forth). According to the Caldecott Award guidelines, “A ‘picture book for children’ as distinguished from other books with illustrations, is one that essentially provides the child with a visual experience. A picture book has a collective unity of story-line, theme, or concept, developed through the series of pictures of which the book is comprised.”
This, like many of the Caldecott guidelines, is not all that helpful. But it’s a start: a picturebook is a book in which pictures play a large role in telling the story (or imparting information-- there are some terrific nonfiction picturebooks!).
Somewhat more helpfully for my purposes, in his excellent and informative Words About Pictures Uri Shulevitz outlines the distinction between picturebooks and storybooks. “A story book tells a story with words. Although the pictures amplify it, the story can be understood without them... In contrast, a true picture book tells a story mainly or entirely with pictures. When words are used, they have an auxiliary role. ... In a picture book, the pictures extend, clarify, complement, or take the place of words. ... Picture books are ‘written’ with pictures as much as they are written with words.” (15-16)
Personally I find that this distinction can get a bit slippery, especially when it comes to fairy-tale retellings that use the original text. But it’s an important one to keep in mind.
I have to confess that I have always had a Secret Weakness for gorgeously illustrated fairy-tale retellings, be they storybooks or picturebooks proper. I think the various fairy tale/myth books illustrated by Kinuko Craft, for example, are guilty of being vehicles for art, and not particularly good as picturebooks. Nobody reads those books for the interplay between text and art; the art completely overwhelms the text, which tends to be rather bland anyway. (There’s an interesting article, “Visual Literacy,” that bewails the tendency to publish just such books.) But the art is so pretty I love them anyway.
A couple of books I grew up with and don’t have in front of me to talk about are David Delamare’s Cinderella and Charles Santore’s The Little Mermaid. The illustrations are absolutely stunning; I can’t really comment on their effectiveness as picturebooks, but I love the art. Oh! And Susan Jeffers, of course-- I’d probably find her obsession with detail and borders distracting now, but as a child I loved them. I had three of hers-- Beauty and the Beast; Brother Eagle, Sister Sky; and The First Friend. Princess Furball, illustrated by Anita Lobel, is another one I really liked.
An artist I wish I’d grown up knowing about is Trina Schart Hyman. She won the Caldecott medal for Little Red Riding Hood, and her Snow White is gorgeous and much more sensual than Nancy Erkholm Burkert’s version (which is also quite lovely). She’s also done some Arthurian retellings and fairy books, and there’s something about her use of line and color that really appeals to me. Also in the category of Gorgeous Fairy Tale Retellings I Wish I’d Known About is Paul O. Zelinsky-- Rapunzel and Rumpelstiltskin, among others. I wrote a five-page paper about how the opening spread of Rumpelstiltskin is all about problematizing the notion of heroism in the story. Look, I’m a grad student, it’s my job to do stuff like that, okay?
Let’s talk about Maurice Sendak for a minute. Where the Wild Things Are is often cited as the perfect picturebook, the epitome of what the form can do, sophisticated in illustration and rich in psychological meaning. I love the heck out of it. Oddly enough, as a child I hated it, but I was a ridiculously prim little thing given to irrational dislikes and also a phobia of monsters. I’m happy to report that these days the primness is something of a facade, and I have a rather postmodern fondness for monsters. (Unfortunately I am still prone to irrational dislikes, but there seems nothing to be done about that.) The only two other Sendak books I’ve read-- In the Night Kitchen and Outside Over There-- are a bit bizarre, but wonderful. I think I must have read Outside Over There as a child, and some (but not all) of my love for it stems from the pleasure of recognition.
Also in the category of Classic Books Young Fiona Hated are the entire works of Dr. Seuss. Many of these are not so much picturebooks as illustrated early readers, but even today I can’t think of his visual style without being filled with a deep and visceral, almost physical, loathing. I’m sorry. I did say the tendency for irrational dislikes was still present.
On the other hand, I was for many years obsessed with the Berenstain Bears books, until I moved on to novels and looked back only for fairy tales.
...
The above comments have been mostly about artists whose work I grew up with, or wish I had. Now I’d like to say a few words about some of the books nominated for the Caldecott Award last year-- we were required to read them all, except ones that turned out to be ineligible (a surprising number). The Caldecott medal is awarded to the “most distinguished picturebook” published in the US in a given year. From what I gather, a lot of the committee debates center around the vagueness of the term “distinguished”.
Swanson, Susan Marie. The House in the Night, illustrated by Beth Krommes. Houghton Mifflin.
This is the book that won the Caldecott medal, and it has a very distinctive look to it. It’s the only nominated book this year to use scratchboard, which makes it really stand out. Some other lovely books in the past have used scratchboard-- one of my favorites is Sukey and the Mermaid (words by Robert San Souci), in which Brian Pinkney’s illustrations give the whole thing a thready, delicate, woven feel. The House in the Night is entirely in black and white, except for spot use of yellow which I find variably confusing or evocative. Some of the illustrations are only tangentially suggested by the words, which are spare and effective, thereby casting a lot of the burden of storytelling on the pictures. There’s a simplicity and strength to the book as a whole that I find very appealing. I liked some of the other nominees better, but I can see why the committee chose this one--it’s certainly one of the most visually interesting works of 2008.
Berger, Carin. The Little Yellow Leaf. Greenwillow.
“Simplicity and strength” are also keywords for Little Yellow Leaf, which would be, hands down, my choice for Most Distinguished Picturebook for (Young) Children. The vibrant collage is amazingly effective without being too busy or prohibitively intricate (more on that in a minute). Berger does some great things with visual perspective, and the colors are just beautiful. Collage often doesn’t appeal to me, but this book absolutely blew me away. Very simple, very effective.
Bryant, Jen. A River of Words, illustrated by Melissa Sweet. Eerdmans.
Another collage work, this one earned a well-deserved Caldecott Honor. I found the collages a bit too busy for my taste, the illustrated bits unappealing, but it’s impossible to deny the artist’s skill or the art’s role in expanding, enhancing, amplifying the text. The book is a biography of the doctor and poet William Carlos Williams, and the very physical, textured collages emphasize the text’s focus on poetry as an act of creation, of construction. It’s a gorgeous book, appropriate for an older age group than Little Yellow Leaf and definitely “distinguished”. Absolutely stunning.
Frazee, Marla. A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever. Harcourt.
Another Caldecott Honor book. I have a horrible, art-snobbish inhibition about calling this one “distinguished” per se in comparison to A River of Words or some of the other more “painterly” nominated works. Its comic-book-influenced style really just doesn’t appeal to me all that much. I’m sorry. I freely admit this about myself, and am trying hard to change my ways through curing my ignorance about comics.
That said, I love this book SO HARD. It’s funny, it’s ironic, it’s totally delightful. The illustrations are incredibly effective; Frazee’s simple but expressive figures have an energy to them that keeps the story barreling forward. But it’s really the interplay between text and pictures that drives the awesomeness. The pictures constantly undermine and contradict the text-- the constant irony is hilarious. Voted Most Likely to be Re-Read Umpteen Times and Cackled Over by the Committee of Yours Truly.
Shulevitz, Uri. How I Learned Geography. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
The third Caldecott Honor book this year, so I feel obliged to mention it. It’s lovely, but I’m afraid I really don’t have much else to say about it.
Thompson, Lauren. The Apple Pie That Papa Baked, illustrated by Jonathan Bean. Simon & Schuster.
This one wasn’t actually eligible, being published in 2007 rather than 2008, but I loved it. The red, brown, white and black illustrations have a lot of energy and warmth.
(Now I want pie, dammit.)
Nelson, Kadir. We Are the Ship: The Story of the Negro League Baseball. Jump at the Sun/Hyperion.
This is a pretty damn awesome book. Nelson utilizes the first person plural to talk about the history of Negro league baseball in a voice that’s intimate, chatty, and feels utterly genuine. The illustrations are gorgeous-- the oil portraits are incredibly evocative and convey a wealth of feeling. However, in my opinion this is an illustrated book rather than a picturebook.
Reibstein, Mark. Wabi Sabi, illustrated by Ed Young. Little Brown.
I mention this book chiefly so that I can use it to talk about the next book in line, though it’s quite nice to look at on its own. Rather than the conventional book construction, Wabi Sabi is bound so that it opens vertically, like a wall calendar. And more collage! There’s some incredible texture here, and it’s a lovely book. But there’s some doubt about whether it’s really for children-- is a child going to even care about the particulars of a philosophy, “a way of seeing the world” that “may best be understood as a feeling, rather than an idea”?
Rumford, James. Silent Music. Roaring Brook.
This book is about Arabic calligraphy, and the difficulty of peace. While the pictures can get a bit busy, the color is luminous and the text poignant (if a little manipulative).
Here comes the design rant. Arabic calligraphy, which reads right-to-left, presents an interesting challenge for a Western-style left-to-right picturebook. Sadly, this book utterly fails to address that challenge-- it’s designed just like any other conventional left-to-right picturebook. The result is that it’s almost impossible to physically get through the book-- once you read the text and look at the pictures (left-to-right) on each doublespread, you then look at the calligraphy (right-to-left) and end up back on the verso (left-hand) page rather than the recto and the page-turn (right-hand). This is a case where a calendar format like Wabi Sabi’s would be really great. In Wabi Sabi, the format doesn’t really contribute much other than to say “Hi! I’m different!” In Silent Music, it would have been of real use in overcoming a fundamental conflict between content and design conventions.
In conclusion, missed opportunities for awesomeness make me sad. :(
Fortunately I do not think The Demon’s Lexicon will contain many missed opportunities for awesomeness. I’m off to read!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-06-03 10:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-06-03 04:10 pm (UTC)i guess beatrix potter was a storybook author/illustrator, right? love her illustrations.
never really liked maurice sendak, except for his calendar book about chicken soup with rice. i think maybe because i didn't like the monsters in where the wild things are & i distinctly remember the book smelling really bad. the smelliest picture book i remember as a child was jumanji. loved the story, but never borrowed that book often due to the awful, awful smell. :P
some of my favorites are the philharmonic gets dressed, round trip, june 29, 1999, the stinky cheese man, & those architectural books by david mccauley.
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