One of the images in the fairy tale slide show was from the illustrator Molly Bang. In this video, graphic design instructor, Jessie Tran, will take you through the images of Bang’s book Picture This: How Pictures Work and the creation of a visual Little Red Riding Hood variation.
The overall composition of a picture book is just as important as any single illustration.
How images and texts work together within that composition helps us to read the images in more complex ways. We are reading with a visual vocabulary. Some of what gives us clues about what is being communicated are:
- Framing – Does the picture exist as a separate framed piece away from the text, perhaps putting us at a distance? Does the illustration go to the edge of the page without a frame? Does this make the reader feel that they are part of the illustration or that it is more casual?
- Line – As in the video above: Horizontal lines can indicate calmness and stability. Vertical lines can be used to indicate energy or barriers. Diagonal lines can indicate instability or even danger. Curvy lines indicate comfort and softness.
- Page Composition: Where is our eye drawn toward? What is being given preference visually?
- Color: The palette of a picturebook helps us to read emotion.
With illustration, we are also often reading a depiction of visual body language in the characters as well.
In a picture book, the illustrations might be symmetrical meaning that the text and images are a match – for example, Dr. Seuss’s One Fish, Two Fish, Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd’s Goodnight Moon, or here, in Ezra Jack’s Keats The Snowy Day.
In many cases, illustrations are complementary or enhancing, meaning that they reflect the text, but that by reading the image we gain something new. Take a look at this image from Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
When we read the image we see that Peter is not exactly listening, setting up the rest of the story.
Maurice Sendak uses a similar approach in Where the Wild Things Are.
Notice how in the first few pages, we learn what kind of mischief Max is up to. As the story goes on Sendak changes the composition of the images to the text and they interact in a different way.
Illustrations and text can also appear in counterpoint or even be contradictory. Sometimes we call this parallel storytelling. In this book, Phoebe Gilman’s Something from Nothing see if you can follow the story of the mice under the floor.
The text never acknowledges the mice, but we see that they have their own story.
Sometimes the illustrations can fully contradict the story as in Satoshi Kitamura’s Lily Takes A Walk.
Respond: Think about one of your favorite picture books (maybe the one you read) what can you say about the illustrations? How do they interact with the text? What kind of visual vocabulary is the illustrator using?
14 thoughts on “How we read images”
One of my favorite picture books, which is the one I did my first presentation on is “The Snowy Day” by Ezra Jack Keats. In the presentation, I mentioned that the main character’s bright right snow suit stood out to me the most when I was young. I color palettes of blues and patterns reminded me of Winter/holiday season. The shape of the suit is also very memorable and feels very child-like and playful because of the drop shape on the head. It uses a symmetrical text-illustration style because it matches what is being shown.
There was also this book called “Mice and Beans” by Pam Muñoz Ryan that I loved when I was younger and it uses parellel story telling. The text follows the story of a grandma throwing a birthday party for her grandchild but never mentions the mice even though the mice was present and helping the grandma every page.
The illustrations in the book I choose for my first presentation, A bad case of stripes played in a fundamental part of the book, as the pictures gave a visual for the story being told. While reading this book, you can see the normal human girl change from looking very normal, to progressively gaining more and more stripes. Without the illustrations, the reader may not get the clear visuals we see with the illustrations. The author uses visual vocabulary all throughout the book in order to show the transitioning of the girl from a normal girl to something totally different.
For the book that I read, “Click Clack Moo Cows That Type”the illustrations really help show the reader the setting of the story an example being seeing the farmer outside and there is a very bright red colored barn behind him.
For my first presentation I read “My feet” by Aliki. There were many different colors which I believe grabs people’s attention especially kids. The illustration helped tell the story and it helps keep attention. Every illustration was based on the text from that page it was on so it also helps make kids understand what the text is saying.
I loved the visuals of “there was an old lady who swallowed a fly.” they were very colorful and large on the page so that your eye was immediately drawn to it. The words were also curved all over the pages and sometimes even in loops. there was a lot going on but in a good way
Thinking back to the books I have read before I can say that the illustrations were what first caught my eye. I would look at the pictures first because they are bright and colorful and see what story the pictures are telling before I read what the words are saying. The tell them story of the text and when I added the words it’s like everything flowed. The words the author used emphasize the pictures like the for example the big juicy apple.
I think good illustration is when the pictures interact with the words like when something is loud they make the words huge and make it take up the whole page. I think illustrations are what kids are able to understand first before they understand the words and that is what makes picture books so important. While the illustrations play with the words I think they become more interesting to children and it encourages them to build their vocabulary.
Thinking back to my favorite picture books, the illustrations I always enjoyed the most were the ones that made me laugh. Where the drawings were clearly done to be dramatic, and the colors are all over the place. They interact with the text by giving you an idea of what or who the author is talking about. And they give you these illustrations as seen in their own eyes, which ultimately will become how you see it.
I remember reading “The Cat in the Hat.” I remember there were a lot of bright colors used in the book, and to represent all the different characters. I remember the characters in the illustrations often had thought bubbles, and had there text written in large bold letters, where it really grabbed the readers attention. The author had put a lot of the words in large bold, and dark text. He or she made sure to emphasize and show a lot of the words in big letters, in order to show the importance and emphasis of those words.
I think when it comes to illustrations in books, they used to definitely help me visualize the story or the specific part in the book better, they greatly help with forming and expanding a person’s imagination.
One of my favorite picture books was “The Rainbow Fish” by Marcus Pfister. There are many things that I notice from looking at the illustrations. One of them is the bright and colorful colors that the illustration used. Illustrates grabs children’s attention and they can connect it to the text. Also, most of the time it’s the first thing a reader notices. Overall, if the book doesn’t have illustrations the readers will not have a clear vision of how things change or how something is. And picture books are very appropriate for younger children.
Considering my favorite book, “Chrysanthemum” by Kevin Henkes, I remember loving the very detailed
and colorful illustrations. I appreciate how Henkes was able to depict Chrysanthemum’s different stages of confidence through her facial expressions. In the beginning, Chrysanthemum absolutely loves her name and is a very confident child as seen by her cheerful and satisfied facial expressions. As soon as Chrysanthemum enters school, she gets teased for her name and becomes insecure hence her head tilting downwards and her eyes and eyebrows becoming tense. When she regains her confidence and love for her name, her facial expressions show that she is finally at ease and her head tilts towards the sky.
The illustrations in children’s literature are typically very bright and fun. Though there are some books, it is less typical for books to have simple and colorless illustrations. The pictures help bring the text to life. They create visual representations for the characters we read about. When illustrators add dimensions to the text and shadows with criss-cross lines, it makes the illustrations look more realistic.
For the book I read “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus” the illustrations are very simple but are still able to tell the story very well. The visual vocabulary that goes along with the illustrations are mostly dialogue and help the child follow along with he story. Without the dialogue the pictures by themselves would be a little confusing to understand what is happening. With certain illustrations within the book you can see the pigeons emotions without him saying anything.