Teachers had been begging me for years to teach a class about how text and images work together in picture books. While I knew what I valued, I felt far from expert at preaching about what makes these books succeed.
But I was willing to learn as I taught, so I put together a slew of pictures books and met with 17 interested teachers for a continuing education class at Meredith College. For 10 hours we examined the interplay of words and pictures. We collaborated on lists of what books succeeded and why. Here are two of the books that wowed us.
The class decided that the synergy between text and illustration is crucial to young audiences who are often more likely to “read” the pictures than the words. We found a great example in Emily Gravett’s The Odd Egg (Simon and Schuster, ages 3-6) as its visual and written power unite to propel you through the story. “The Odd Egg” has a simple plot - a gathering of birds crow about the eggs they’ve laid. All except Duck who feels his failure and the mocking of others. Luckily he finds a large green-spotted egg that he happily adopts. The illustration shows him perched uncomfortably so high atop the shell that it looks as if he’ll be pushed out of the illustration. Duck knits patiently as the other fledglings emerge. Gravett builds visual suspense by arranging these six hatchings on pages that start out slim and build in width as we move from chick to flamingo. Each time an egg opens there’s a “creak, crack” refrain. My class imagined children chorusing and adding to the story’s involving tension. Finally, the Duck’s egg hatches and out comes an alligator, with a “creak, crack, snap” ready to defend his duck “mama.”
The class noted the book’s success with its text-picture connection that makes children want to look closer, grabs reader’s attention, and a tension that is fully realized by the ending. The ecru pages leave lots of room around the gentle water colored birds, as if to leave room for lots of discussion about the story.
When we examined older picture books, the primary difference seemed to be in sophistication. This was clearly true in Joseph Slate’s I Want To Be Free (Putnam, ages 9 and up). Part of what intrigued us about this book was how it used continual refrains and rhyming couplets. These are conventions typically connected with younger picture books, but Slate employed them with a startlingly different effect.
The book has a simple appearance, but it opens with a verse that makes its complexity clear. This verse repeats throughout the book. “Before I die, I want to be free. But the Big Man says, ‘You belong to me.’” Unlike the choruses of younger books, this refrain is haunting and mournful in telling the story of an unnamed slave’s flight to freedom. In younger fiction, rhyming couplets can be rollicking, or calming. But the couplets in this book build uncomfortably to a crescendo as the slave escapes and tries to forget the pain of ankle irons he can’t remove, the refrain reminding us of his terrible condition.
The illustrations underscored the class’ observation that older picture books should not be rushed through; they demand careful consideration. E.B. Lewis’ first illustration fills the background with the huge torso of a man who wears suspenders, a white shirt and straw hat that shades his face. Before him we see the backs of three ragged, bare-headed black people who seem dwarfed to the proportionate size of children. The three seem almost swallowed up in his overwhelming presence.
The class noted how the color and tones of the illustrations can extend the text and contain symbolic elements. This kind of symbolism begins with that disproportion and continues with the use of colors. As the slave escapes all the scenes are dark. Is this strictly because of the night escape, or do these also represent an emotional tone? The answer seems to arrive during his climactic escape. Will he save himself, or risk his safety to provide for a motherless, dying child? On the three pages when he struggles with this decision, there is not a single light. Once he takes on the care of this child, a home with glowing lights welcomes the pair to freedom. It’s then that the pages brighten; large expanses of white surround the happy pair. Then, on the last page, almost half of the spread is consumed with light washes. All our focus moves to the man who holds tight to the smiling child, his face recording with one small tear the powerful feeling of one who has been magically released him from his bonds. This powerful simplicity of that last image backs up one thought the class had about many of these older picture books. “More is less,” said one student and we all agreed. The resolution of “I Want To Be Free” provides a shining example of that.
Want opportunites for learning? Here are Wilde’s upcoming CEU classes: June 5, 4:30-8:30; June 6, 9:00-3:00 "Reading Methods to Unite All Subjects” Thursday, June 11; 10-3 & Friday June 12; 10-3 “Story Trains: A Method to Link Early Reading and Writing” More information? http://www.meredith.edu/community-programs
Other books we admired:
Tony Milton, Dinosaurumpus (Scholastic, ages 3-6) Triceratops, deinosuchus and others of their kind romp through the pages as the fiction and non-fiction meet in rollicking rhymes.
Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Duck!Rabbit! (Chronicle, ages 3-7) Two unseen narrators look at one shape and make cases for whether it’s a duck or a rabbit. Great introduction to optical illusions, perspective, and out-of-the-box thinking.
Kimiko Kajikawa, Close to You: How Animals Bond (Holt, ages 2-5) Tender photographs and a rhyming text introduces animal relationships that show obvious parallels to human experiences. Molly Bang and Penny Chisholm, Living Sunlight (Scholastic, ages 4-9) The author and the illustrator take photosynthesis, a subject could be dull and complex, and make it personable and clear.
Zetta Elliot’s Bird (Lee and Low, ages 10 and up) A simple appearance for a complex subject as we learn how young Bird draws to keep him stable after the death of his beloved grandfather and his brother’s overdose. Roni Schotter, Doo-Wop Pop (Amistad, ages 9-11) Mr. Searles, the janitor, is “old, but still cool” as he proves when he turns several shy elementary school students on to the power of doo-wop.
Ken Stark, Marching to Appomattox: The Footrace That Ended the War (Putnam, ages 9-12) A readable, conversational text plays up the excitement as it tracess the six days that ended the Civil War. Doreen Rappaport, Eleanor, Quiet No More: The Life of Eleanor Roosevelt (Hyperion, ages 8-12) A powerful picture book biography that showed how the timid child grew into a strong woman.
You can get the full lists of books and criteria by contacting Wilde through her website: http://www.ignitingwriting.com