From Cover to Cover (12 page)

STYLE

Style can refer to the features that make an individual artist’s work distinctive and recognizable. It can also refer to a particular manner of artistic expression that has been developed over time that can be defined by broad characteristics. In written reviews of picture books, the identification of a particular art style can be very helpful to readers who are trying to get a sense of what the art looks like. If we read that the illustrations are abstract, for example, it can help us begin to picture them.

Realistic
: Illustrations that attempt to depict things as they really
look. Objects, animals, and people are shown in proper perspective and proportion. Jerry Pinkney’s illustrations in his adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s
The Ugly Duckling
are a good example of a realistic style.

Abstract
: The artist deliberately distorts perspective and proportion so that objects and people are removed from reality. There are hundreds of examples of the use of abstraction in picture books. R. Gregory Christie’s abstract illustrations are a perfect match for Jeron Ashford Frame’s text in
Yesterday I Had the Blues
. The elongated limbs and oversized heads on his characters emphasize their emotional moods. The distorted objects and frenetic backgrounds in Yumi Heo’s artwork for
Henry’s First-Moon Birthday
, by Lenore Look, capture the sense of displacement a child feels after the birth of a new sibling.

Surrealistic
: Realistic art that achieves a dreamlike quality or sense of unreality through unnatural or unexpected juxtapositions of objects or people. Stian Hole uses a surrealistic style brilliantly to show a young boy’s doubts about the changes in his life in
Garmann’s Summer
. Frida Kahlo’s signature surrealistic style is echoed in Ana Juan’s dreamlike illustrations in the biographical picture book,
Frida
, by Jonah Winter.

Nonobjective
: Part of the contemporary art movement, nonobjective art gets away from the idea of depicting objects and people at all and instead uses color, texture, line, and shape to suggest expression and mood. This style is used infrequently in children’s picture books, although you will sometimes see it used in backgrounds. Chris Raschka plays with nonobjective art in some of his picture books, including
Mysterious Thelonious
, where musical notes are matched to the values on a color wheel, and
Another Important Book
, by Margaret Wise Brown, where geometric shapes represent the ages one to five.

Impressionistic
: A highly influential style developed by nineteenth-century French painters who used dabs of color to re-create a sense of
reflected, or broken, light. Impressionists concerned themselves with the changing effect of light on surfaces to capture a subjective or sensory impression of a scene or object rather than a detailed depiction of reality. Maurice Sendak used this style in his artwork for
Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present
, by Charlotte Zolotow.

Expressionistic
: An influential twentieth-century movement developed into a style that expresses the artist’s personal response to the subject. It is closely related to abstract art. Since it is concerned primarily with the emotions, it is widely used in picture books. Vera Williams’s
A Chair for My Mother
provides one of many examples.

Naive
: Depicts scenes out of the artist’s own experiences in what appears to be an untrained, awkward style. There is no depth in the pictures, and all people and objects appear flat and one-dimensional. West African artist Pierre Yves Njeng used this style in
Vacation in the Village
, a book that shows the typical daily life of children in Cameroon. Picture-book artist Barbara Cooney has used the naive art style in several books that cover the life spans of ordinary, fictional characters. For an example, see
Ox-Cart Man
, by Donald Hall.

Folk art
: There are many variants in folk art style, as each is developed in a particular time and place and reflects the aesthetic values of the culture from which it comes. What they all have in common is a striking use of color, lack of perspective, the use of stylized pattern, and simple shapes. Folk art in its pure form has been used in picture books such as
Goha, the Wise Fool
, retold by Denys Johnson-Davies, that uses
khiyamiyas
, a traditional form of appliqué created by artisans in Cairo. Other artists have used styles inspired by folk art. For example, Nancy Hom based her paintings for the Hmong folktale
Nine in One, Grr! Grr!,
told by Blia Xiong, on the style used by the Hmong people in their embroidered story cloths. The style Paul Goble uses in all his retellings of Lakota folktales, such as
Iktomi and the Buzzard
, was inspired by
nineteenth-century Lakota ledger art, an art tradition started by imprisoned Lakota warriors who drew detailed accounts of battles in ledger books.

Cartoon art
: The artist uses fine line to create stock characters marked by exaggeration and absurdity. This style is widely used in humorous picture books that contain a lot of slapstick action. Harry Bliss, well known for his
New Yorker
cartoons, also uses cartooning in his humorous illustrations for picture books like Doreen Cronin’s
Diary of a Worm
. Many artists combine it with design elements popularized in comic strips by using sequences of panels and speech balloons in their compositions. Mini Grey does this brilliantly in
Traction Man Is Here!
, a hilarious story about a boy who imagines his action figure as an action hero. Cartoon art is also frequently used to lighten a heavy subject and to put a comfortable distance between the child reader and a potentially disturbing theme. Steve Björkman uses a cartoon style effectively for this purpose in his illustrations for
I Hate English!
, Ellen Levine’s story of a refugee child’s difficult adjustment to life in the United States.

For every picture book, an artist chooses the medium and style he or she thinks will best serve the story. Many artists vary both medium and style from book to book: John Steptoe and Ed Young come immediately to mind as two artists whose picture books reflect an enormous versatility in both areas. Steptoe, for example, used heavy black lines and brightly colored stylized shapes to illustrate his urban tale
Stevie
, and he created detailed watercolor paintings for his retelling of an African folktale,
Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters
. Ed Young has used traditional cut paper (
The Emperor and the Kite
), pencil sketches (
High on a Hill
), pastels and watercolors (
Lon Po Po
) and collage (
Seven Blind Mice
) in styles ranging from realistic to nonobjective. Other artists choose to use the same medium and style again and again, and offer us a visual display of
variations on a theme. Whatever the case, think about how the chosen medium and style work in the picture book you are evaluating. How is the media used to express the action or emotion in the story? Is it effective? Does the art style match the textual style? If not, is there a reason for this incongruity? Picture-book creators sometimes purposely contrast the visual and verbal tone in a story for the sake of irony. A direct, understated text may be illustrated with scenes filled with action and wild antics, so that the story springs from the deliberate conflict between the two, as Marla Frazee did with
A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever
.

In spite of the great feeling of surprise and spontaneity we often get from them, it is important to remember that nothing ever happens accidentally in a picture book. It is a complex, carefully planned work of art that creates a satisfying interplay between text and pictures to tell a story that a small child can understand. By learning to look for the individual pieces and by developing an awareness of the techniques that are used to make them all work together, we can better understand the work as a whole so that we can clearly articulate our critical and emotional responses.

It is a common misconception among many adults that picture books are the best books to give a child who is just learning to read. While it is true that some picture books have characteristics that make them accessible to beginning readers, most picture books, since they are intended to be read aloud to children, are written at a reading level that is much higher than that of a child in first grade. There are, however, books expressly written for children who are learning to read that use simple vocabulary, large typeface, and short sentences. These are called
easy readers, beginning readers
, or simply
readers
. One step up from readers is another category of books that are most commonly called
transitional books
. These books feature simple sentences and short chapters, and serve as a bridge between easy readers and longer chapter books.

Both beginning readers and transitional books are relatively new to the scene in children’s trade publishing. In 1954 novelist John Hersey wrote an article in
Life
magazine in which he complained that children in public schools were failing to learn to read because their schoolbooks were bland and unchallenging. He described the characters in these primers as “abnormally courteous and unnaturally clean boys and girls” and the illustrations as uniform and insipid. “Why should [children]
not have pictures that widen rather than narrow the associative richness the children give to the words they illustrate—drawings like those wonderfully imaginative geniuses among children’s illustrators—Tenniel, Howard Pyle, Dr. Seuss…?”

Soon after the article appeared in print, Dr. Seuss took up the challenge put forth by Hersey. He acquired a limited vocabulary list from the text book division at Houghton Mifflin and spent more than a year shaping just 237 easy-to-read words into a story. The result was the now-classic
The Cat in the Hat
, published by Random House in 1957. Although Hersey had been thinking of illustrations in particular when he cited Dr. Seuss, in the end it was the book’s text that stood out as remarkable. Dr. Seuss showed that with a little creativity and a lot of hard work, engaging stories could be written with a controlled vocabulary.

The same year Harper & Row came out with
Little Bear
by Else Holmelund Minarik, the first title in its influential I Can Read series. While Seuss set the standard for excellence in writing, the I Can Read series set the standard for form. Recognizing that children learning to read are eager to feel like “big kids,” Harper designed the books in their beginning reader series to look like skinny chapter books rather than picture books.
Little Bear
, in fact, is divided into four chapters that not only serve to give young readers natural stopping places for much-needed breaks from the hard work of reading but also help to build the self-esteem of children who pride themselves on reading chapters. The characteristic design of the I Can Read series was imitated by many other publishers as they launched their own beginning reader series in subsequent years, and today it is widely recognized as a standard form.

In the 1970s Arnold Lobel took beginning readers to new heights with the introduction of his Frog and Toad series. Separate volumes in this series have been cited as Honor Books by both the Newbery and the Caldecott committees, an indication of the overall excellence of the
Frog and Toad books, since beginning readers are rarely singled out as distinguished for either writing or art. Using a limited vocabulary, Lobel managed to create two distinctive characters by zeroing in on their simple interactions with each other. Their actions and reactions are often based on repetition, a device that makes the text predictable and easy to read, and also allows the author to introduce surprising, humorous elements to balance the predictability. In
Frog and Toad Are Friends
, for example, Frog asks Toad to tell him a story to cheer him up when he is sick. Toad seeks inspiration in unusual ways:

Each of Toad’s unpredictable actions is clearly shown in the illustrations. These pictures give clues to the reader who is struggling to decode the words. Throughout the Frog and Toad books, Lobel provides a comfortable context for beginning readers with both words and pictures. His words provide clues by using repetition, and his pictures provide clues by depicting action. As beginning reader books, they represent the perfect unity of form and content.

Seuss, Minarek, and Lobel set a high standard for easy readers that few have been able to meet. To encourage excellence in this sort of writing, the ALA’s Association for Library Service to Children established a new award in 2004, named for Dr. Seuss. The Theodor Seuss Geisel Award recognizes both the author and illustrator of a book for beginning
readers. Interestingly, it is not limited to books in an easy-reader format; it can also be awarded to a picture book that is easy enough for a child just learning to read.

Unfortunately there has not been a similar progression in the development of books written for children at the next stage in their reading. Parents, teachers, and librarians had for a long time been stressing a need for what they called “third grade books”—books that offered a little more challenge than the hardest easy readers and yet were still a bit easier than the easiest chapter books. Children who were making the transition from easy readers to chapter books were beginning to read mainly for meaning, and yet reading was still hard work for their untrained eyes. They needed books that struck a delicate balance between readers and chapter books. Although most publishers’ lists offered at least a few titles that fit into this category, there was no consistent effort to create this type of book specifically until the mid-1980s.

An outstanding forerunner of transitional books, and one that many hoped would set the standard, was Ann Cameron’s
The Stories Julian Tells
. This easy chapter book featuring an imaginative young African-American boy and his trusting, gullible little brother, Huey, was perfectly designed for children making the transition from easy readers to chapter books. Like many easy readers, it has a large typeface and the number of lines per page never exceeds fifteen. But
The Stories Julian Tells
is designed to look like a thick chapter book, the sort of book that readers making the transition are desperate to be able to read. Many librarians who have had the opportunity to introduce these young readers to Julian have seen this scene played out again and again: As the librarian pulls the book off the shelf, the child hesitates upon seeing its thickness. The moment the book is opened, however, the child shows visible relief, then delight, then pride. Because adults saw this happen repeatedly with a variety of young readers, soon after
The Stories Julian Tells
was published,
they asked for several dozen more like it.

A few years later when publishers began to develop series to meet these demands,
The Stories Julian Tells
and its follow-up,
More Stories Julian Tells
, were not used as models, unfortunately. Publishers opted instead for a standard design that made the books look like skinny chapter books. In order to accomplish this, more text had to be crammed onto each page by using smaller type and more lines per page. Even subsequent volumes in Cameron’s Julian series adopted this new look, rather than following the standard for excellence set by the first two books in the series.

The success of both easy readers and transitional books is as much dependent on form as it is on content. Because these books are created especially to meet the needs of children who are developing reading skills, it is helpful for us to have a minimal basic understanding of what happens when a child begins to read so that we can apply this knowledge to these books when we evaluate them. Most children learn to read in the controlled setting of a classroom, and they have traditionally been taught using basal readers that are specially designed for this purpose. Easy readers and transitional books were not specifically created to replace the basal reader; rather, they were intended as supplementary reading so that children can practice newly acquired skills and find a wide range of reading material that interests them.

Children who are beginning to read are learning to decode printed symbols that stand for words within their oral vocabulary. To decode the words, they sound them out or say them aloud so that they can hear them. As children learn to read, they develop a store of
sight words
, common words that they learn to recognize immediately, such as “the,” “ball,” “mother,” “play,” and “run.” Sight words are most often purposefully taught in the classroom, thus we get the concept of “reading at grade level.”

Part of the challenge children face is in training their eyes to move
from left to right across lines of print. The eye is controlled by small muscle movements, and for children small muscle movements are a challenge in and of themselves. When the eyes move across a line of print, they make a series of jumps, stopping briefly to focus. An experienced adult reader typically sees two letters to the left side of the point of focus and six to eight letters to the right. The inexperienced child reader, however, sees one letter to the left and one letter to the right of their point of focus. This physical reality explains why children learning to read find it easier to decode words made up of fewer than five letters. As their eye muscles begin to develop, they are gradually able to take in more on the right side of the point of focus and they can handle longer, unfamiliar words. They can also begin to handle longer sentences. All the while, they continue to add to their store of sight words. All these factors work together, so that with practice children eventually can make a shift from reading aloud to decode the words to reading silently for meaning.

The creators of easy readers and transitional books have taken this process into account in developing their books. They strive to meet the needs of children who are learning to read by paying special attention to both content and design. As we evaluate these books, we should look carefully at the following components of each.

Content
: How is the story written to make it easy to read? What sort of vocabulary did the author choose to use? How often are difficult words used, and how does the author use them? How long are the sentences? Are the sentences simple, compound, or complex? How does the author use structure to build context and provide textual clues? How do the illustrations support the text and offer help to the reader?

Design
: How is the text presented to make it easy to read? Is the type large and clear? Is there a lot of white space on the page? How long are the lines of type, and how many lines appear on the page? How often do illustrations appear, and how much space do they cover?

EASY READERS

When we evaluate easy readers, it is important to think about them in terms of what the author and illustrator have created (content) and how the publisher has presented the work of the author and illustrator (design). Both aspects should be given equal importance by the critic. In the best examples of this type of book, content and design form a unified whole that makes the task of reading easier and thus pleasurable for the child.

CONTENT

V
OCABULARY

Many easy readers are written using the sight words children learn in first and second grade, combined with short words that are easy to decode. Compound words composed of two short sight words, such as “snowball,” are also easier to read. Longer, unfamiliar words can be successfully integrated in moderation if there are strong context clues in the pictures or if they are used as descriptors that can be skipped without losing meaning. In looking at the words appearing in easy readers, think about the kinds of words that are used. Are they sight words? If not, have they fewer than five letters? If they are long words, how are they used? Are there picture clues to help the child figure them out? Are the words likely to be part of the child’s natural oral language? A word of three or four letters, such as “rue” or “cusp,” isn’t likely to mean anything to a six-year-old, even if it can be decoded. Notice the way Dr. Seuss ingeniously uses short words and sight words in this passage from
The Cat in the Hat
: