• Look for specific ways illustrators engage children
• Encouraging relationships
• Adults = text oriented / Children = picking up on parts of illustrations not always noticed by adults (See example books: ''Peepo!' and 'Each Peach Pear Plum' by Janet and Allan Ahlberg)
• Entering the "world of play" with books
• Building up of suspense across pages
• Rhyme, rhythm and repetition combination
• Pacing and rhythm - not just what the words mean, but more importantly how the words sound (bouncy, rhythmic)
• A bonding experience between adults and children
• Caldecott 1877-1886 - first children's book illustrator
• Beatrix Potter - first author and illustrator of the same book
• "Little books for little hands to hold" - Beatrix Potter books
• 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit' - 1902
• Animals in Beatrix Potter's tales are "small and in danger" (relatable, like a child)
• Anthropomorphism - the characterisation and personification of characters like Peter Rabbit, who wears a little coat
• A unique world with memorable characters
• 'Thomas the Tank Engine' - 1942
• 'Thomas the Tank Engine' is a parable for naughty children (going off the rails)
• Key to success with 'Thomas the Tank Engine'? "The faces. Faces have an extraordinary power to move you."
• Enid Blyton - 1949
• 'Noddy' exploded with colour into a world of black and white (Harmsen Van De Beek)
• 'Noddy' is relevant to the time - postwar.
• 'Noddy' known as "puppet books" including teddy bears and dolls - alike the contemporary 'Toy Story' animated movies
• 'Noddy' - crime, punishment and authority
• ABC books, flat colour on one side, image on the other. Exuberant (leaning a little more towards a picture book than a children's book?)
• "Not just 'A' for 'Apple' or 'F' for 'Fish'"
• Messy illustrations relate to a child's own pictures
• "The essential thing is creativity"
• ABC new ways of unlocking children's potential
• Childhood is important now - looking at it in a new light
• 'Rosie's Walk' by Pat Hutchins - each double page spread is a little journey/story (like a silent film) Silent Fox is after Rosie, and turning the page affects the fox. This gives the power of superiority to the children - they can see what is happening
• Young children - yet to read - can understand complex images. They make very big jumps.
• 'Dogger' 19070's (Renaissance in children's book illustrations) by Shirley Hughes - something close to their own lives. The story of losing something close to them, in this case a cuddly toy - traumatic! Tensions. Hughes puts herself "inside the emotion of a child"
• Expressing emotion in the stance and facial expressions - realism in illustration. "A wealth of detail to delight in."
• "Traveling around the page with you eye."
• 'Granpa' by John Burningham - fragments of poetic conversation. Allows conversation about personal opinions, thoughts and feelings between the reader and child
• 'Granpa' - Evocative picture and unusual text
• 'Granpa' - Raising deep issues
• 'Granpa' - leaving space for the reader to fill in the gaps. Doesn't need to be spelled out - Granpa is gone
• 1980's - before this time, if babies couldn't speak, they were thought on as incomprehensible
• Children are introduced into a world of "buzzing confusion" and reading a book slows it down
• 'Friends' by Helen Oxenbury- using simple images and characters that babies would recognise
• Janet and Allan Ahlberg (Janet - illustrator, Allan - author although both working together as a collaboration) 'Each Peach Pear Plum' - a game of 'I Spy' ("Each, Peach, Pear, Plum, I spy Tom Thumb!") Also a game of join-the-dots, characters hiding in the illustration from a previous page
• Interactive point-it-out books - a bonding experience
• Reading as play "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" - repetitive stories
• 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' illustrated by Helen Oxenbury - use of words that aren't real, but are fun to say such as: "swishy swashy, swishy swashy..."
• Realism and believability to the story
• Typical family approach
• Recapping everything while being chased back home by a bear
• 'So Much' by Trish Cooke (End of 20th Century)
• The family element - capturing the spirit of family
• Story-telling from Dominica - the art of oral story-telling translated into books
• Includes the reader so they feel like a part of the story themselves
• Read-aloud text, fun to read to a child
• Ending on a calming note, ready for bed (not only for the character, but also for the child listening/reading)
• Today's children's books are experimenting with different media approaches, for examples Lauren Child's 'Charlie and Lola'
• 'Charlie and Lola' - collage work, "Lauren begged, borrowed and stole from the real world for her illustrations" somewhat like a child does.
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