Do you remember when you were
little before you could read? Or
when you were just learning to
read? Did you pour over the
pictures in the book, finding more
stories than just the ones that the
words provided? Or did the art
itself tell you the story?
Tuesday. Beautiful watercolor art
on each page tells us the story of
what happened on Tuesday when
frogs took to the air on their lily
pads for a great adventure.
Whether the art enhances the
story, is the story, or is constructed
as part of the story, there is magic
in the art found on the pages of
In Maurice Sendak’s Where the
children’s books. This is storybook
Wild Things Are, one page has
art. Storybook art can be the full
words that say, “The night Max
collection of art found in a single
wore his wolf suit and made
picture book, or it might be an art
mischief of one kind” On the
piece that could easily be found on
facing page, the picture tells much one of the pages within a children’s
more of the story. We see Max in a book.
wolf suit standing on a stack of
books, hammer in hand, nailing the Consider Mr. Fox’s Winter
end of a rope of tied cloth to the Adventure. Can you imagine a
wall.
story where Mr. Fox sets off with
his cart full of supplies to prove
Harold, armed with a purple
that the world is much greater than
crayon, decides to take a walk at
Animal Town?
night in Crocket Johnson’s Harold
Or perhaps when you look at The
and the Purple Crayon. This
Scholar, you can almost see the
imaginative story unfolds as Harold
stories that the wise rabbit will be
draws out his path, which leads to
telling the readers? Both The
the woods, where he sees a
Hutch and The Long Goodbye
dragon, and so on.
might easily be a part of the same
book as The Scholar.
In David Wiesner’s Tuesday, the
Mushroom Town might be a place
story is told entirely through
explored in either Mr. Fox’s Winter
pictures. The introduction tells us
Adventure or it might be a place in
that it is somewhere in the USA on
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