Children's books often have different illustrators and writers. I think that images in a book can have as dramatic, if not more, an effect on how a child interprets the story and imagery. If done properly, the images can serve to improve the conveyance of the message and increase overall enjoyment of the book but, if done improperly, can skew the message or reduce the coherence of the book. Many books with simple sentences, strange rhyming schemes or made up words benefit immensely from pictures.
The first author that comes to mind when i think about this relationship is Dr. Seuss, a man who was neither a doctor nor a Suess but he wrote some darn fine children's books. Half of everything he wrote was ridiculous, nonsensical rhymes and made up words that were simply fun to say and the images that the provided along side them really help to make a little sense of these strange phrases. The pictures helped you to understand what a Wocket looked like and what color a Truffala tree is. They set moods and pretty much accounted for all of the actions that took place in his books.
I have also seen a huge amount of books, both for children and adults, where it doesnt seem like the illustrator actually read the book before designing illustrations. this can get very confusing when the picture has almost nothing to do with what is supposedly happening.
Hey,
ReplyDeleteI agree 100% with this sentiment! Both the text and illustrations go hand in hand, and it is up to the author to ensure they are completely in sync. Dr. Suess is my own personal favorite childhood author, and he was my first choice of reference for this as well. His illustrations all directly had the correct feel and tied well to the theme and provided the perfect amount of detail when ever he described the wild world's of his inner imagination. Now authors who don't quite do it well are out there. Albeit to say who flat out corrupted the story can be a bit subjective, but I would say overall the distinction isn't too hard to distinguish.
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ReplyDeleteDr. Suess is a great example! His books are so silly and wonderful because they live entirely on their own, where the reader can't really reference from their own understanding of what certain things are like a Wocket so the pictures are a wonderful addition to the quirky stories. Without the illustrations, I don't believe the books would be as successful as they are now simply because most of the time Dr. Suess doesn't describe what things are meant to look like (since there are pictures) so it would be hard to readers to picture what anything would look like in his books. Great post!
ReplyDelete(I messed up my previous post so I deleted it!)