Show Me a Story! Why Picture Books Matter Conversations with 21 of the World's Most Celebrated Illustrators

362 Pages·2013·6.68 MB·English

by  Leonard Marcus

W
hy do picture books matter? Of course part of the reason is because they’re
books, but the heart of the matter is right there in the name; it’s the pictures.
Before they read words, children are reading pictures. In picture books, the
illustrations work in concert with the text in a way that is unique among art
forms.
Picture books tell stories in a visual language that is rich and multileveled,
sophisticated in its workings despite its often deceptively simple appearance. It
is through the book’s images that a child first understands the world of the story
— where it is set, when it takes place, whether it’s familiar or new. They read
the characters’ emotions and interactions in facial expressions and body
language. They may notice secondary pictorial storylines happening alongside
the main action, like a secret for them to follow. And nowhere is visual humor
explored more fully than in the picture book. Possibly only Charlie Chaplin or
Buster Keaton could equally run the gamut from gentle kidding to sophisticated
wit to pie-in-the-face slapstick to anarchic postmodernism.
Such visual reading is as important to a child’s development as reading
written language is. Take away the pictures and you deprive kids of a wealth of
understanding — not to mention a lot of fun.
The first art that most children see is in picture books. That’s a big
responsibility for the illustrator. Leonard Marcus showcases a group of artists
who recognize that responsibility and respond with work that challenges and
inspires kids’ burgeoning visual literacy. In twenty-one captivating and intimate
interviews, Show Me A Story! offers an in-depth look at the passion and vision
that these amazing artists bring to their work. No two are alike, except in their
remarkable levels of creativity. Their books leave kids amazed and moved. They
leave their imaginations energized. And quite often, they leave the kids giggling
maniacally on the floor.
That is why picture books matter.
David Wiesner
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
MITSUMASA ANNO
QUENTIN BLAKE
ASHLEY BRYAN
JOHN BURNINGHAM
ERIC CARLE
LOIS EHLERT
KEVIN HENKES
YUMI HEO
TANA HOBAN
JAMES MARSHALL
ROBERT MCCLOSKEY
HELEN OXENBURY
JERRY PINKNEY
CHRIS RASCHKA
MAURICE SENDAK
PETER SÍS
WILLIAM STEIG
ROSEMARY WELLS
MO WILLEMS
VERA B. WILLIAMS
LISBETH ZWERGER
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ILLUSTRATION AND PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS
SOURCE NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T
he picture book came of age in the United States during the 1930s as the
nation was recovering from the Great Depression. Americans, until then, had
looked primarily to Europe for culture and to England in particular for the finest
examples of illustrated books for the young. Picture books by British artists
Randolph Caldecott, Kate Greenaway, Walter Crane, Beatrix Potter, and L.
Leslie Brooke filled library shelves alongside those created by a small but
growing number of American illustrators, including E. Boyd Smith, C. B. Falls,
Wanda Gág, and Robert Lawson. As America’s industrial might grew, so did the
conviction that the time had come for American illustrators to rise to the
challenge of matching, or even surpassing, the high standard set by artists from
across the Atlantic. It was with this ambitious goal in mind that in 1937 the
American Library Association established a prize for illustration and named it
the Randolph Caldecott Medal after the greatest of England’s picture-book
masters.
In 1942, Robert McCloskey became only the fifth illustrator to be honored
with a Caldecott Medal. It is amusing to learn that when McCloskey’s editor,
May Massee of Viking Press, telephoned him with the good news, the creator of
Make Way for Ducklings had to ask her to explain just what it was that he should
be so happy about. He had not yet heard of the medal. The episode suggests the
degree to which the American children’s-book world of the 1930s and ’40s
remained a young and insular cottage industry. Few of the major illustrators of
McCloskey’s generation started out with dreams of making their names as
juvenile artists. Most wandered into the field by chance. McCloskey, for
instance, had wanted a career as a muralist and painter. But he needed to make a
living, and because his best friend happened to be May Massee’s nephew, he had
shown his portfolio to her. The editor, who immediately recognized his promise,
gave him encouragement and a thoughtful critique. Then, sealing his loyalty to
her for life, she took the young artist out to dinner.
By the time Maurice Sendak arrived on the scene less than a generation later,
the situation in America had changed dramatically. Exhausted by years of
depression and war, parents of the 1950s baby boom era were determined to give
their children a happier, more opportunity-rich childhood than the one they
themselves had experienced. They bought large numbers of books for their
youngsters and supported the funding of public schools and libraries — the two
institutions that between them purchased the lion’s share of American children’s
books. As the field flourished, the status of illustrators rose. In 1963, when
Sendak’s Caldecott Medal–winning Where the Wild Things Are first appeared,
an appreciative public was prepared to hail it as a masterpiece (albeit a
somewhat controversial one, with its young tantrum-throwing boy and half-
scary, half-goofy alter egos) and its creator as a pop-cultural hero.
Sendak’s triumph added immeasurably to the forward momentum of the
picture book as an art form. On both sides of the Atlantic, more and more
talented young people entered the field, among them England’s Quentin Blake
and John Burningham, soon to be joined by the latter’s wife, Helen Oxenbury,
and by a brilliant young Austrian artist named Lisbeth Zwerger. American
publishers were belatedly coming to grips with the multicultural and multiracial
makeup of American society — and with their responsibility to publish for
underserved minorities. Catalyzed by the civil rights movement, the new
awareness of those years opened unprecedented opportunities to artists of color
such as Ashley Bryan and Jerry Pinkney.
Such was the excitement and prestige surrounding picture books that even
highly accomplished illustrators like Eric Carle (then a successful advertising
artist) and New Yorker cartoonist William Steig might decide, in mid-career, to
turn to the picture book as a worthy outlet for their talents. Carle took the leap in
reaction to his growing disenchantment with the world of selling. To supplement
his magazine income, Steig too had been designing ads, and he too had come to
long for more satisfying work. In 1969, Steig’s Sylvester and the Magic Pebble
(which received the Caldecott Medal for 1970) and Carle’s The Very Hungry
Caterpillar both were published — landmark picture books that have not only
delighted countless children but also inspired new generations of illustrators.
Carle’s name became synonymous with a type of picture book for which there
were few historical precedents: books for children even younger than those of
the traditional “picture-book ages” of four to eight; books that often had built-in
novelty or “toylike” elements. His relatively brief, read-aloud stories introduced
basic concepts such as counting and the days of the week in a playful way, as
much by “showing” as by “telling.” At first, America’s public libraries, which
had not yet committed themselves to serving the needs of toddlers and
preschoolers, had no use for Carle’s books. But a new generation of parents
quickly discovered them for themselves, as did educators at the preschools and
day-care centers that were opening everywhere. As the growing demand for such
“young” picture books became increasingly clear, more artists began to create
them — including one American photographer who earlier in her career had
specialized in making photographic portraits of children, Tana Hoban. So too did
an energetic young book designer at a Boston educational publishing house
named Rosemary Wells. During the 1980s, Wells and Helen Oxenbury each
produced memorable baby and toddler books salted with developmental insight,
wry humor, and well-placed, knowing nods to the difficulties of being a good
parent. Together, they popularized the board book as the ideal format for the
youngest children, those who were as apt to yank and bite their books as look at
them.
By then, children’s-book publishing had become international in scope and
flavor, with publishers from many countries sharing an eagerness to expose their
children to books and ideas from other cultures. Japanese author and illustrator
Mitsumasa Anno first became known to American readers in 1970 with the
publication of Topsy-Turvies: Pictures to Stretch the Imagination. Throughout
the 1970s and ’80s, his extraordinary picture books attracted an ever wider
international audience. Like Eric Carle, Anno won fans among educators and
librarians for being a gentle teacher with a genius for transforming learning into
an absorbing and seemingly effortless game.
It took American critics a long time to grasp the special achievement of
picture books as “simple” as Carle’s; not surprisingly, Carle has not won the
Caldecott Medal. Another popular American artist whose picture books were
long underrated by critics, in his case because the books were so funny, was
James Marshall. A largely self-taught artist, Marshall was inspired to create
children’s books after discovering the work of Sendak, Tomi Ungerer, and
Edward Gorey. Although less of a technical wizard than any of these role
models, Marshall nonetheless mastered his own idiosyncratic approach to
drawing and design, and developed a signature line that harmonized perfectly
with his archly witty voice. Sendak himself would later express his envy of the
lightness and mischief of Marshall’s drawings. The endlessly amusing rogues’
gallery of Marshall’s characters — George and Martha, Miss Nelson, Viola
Swamp, Fox, and others — have the enduring distinction of being both funny
and true. Awards committees recognized Marshall’s worth later than children