Reading Images Since 1922, the American Library Association has honored the most distinguished American children’s book each year. The Newbery Medal, for instance, honors authors for distinguished work in literature. The decision to honor illustrators similarly, resulted in the Caldecott Medal in 1937. It is important to look at these award-winning books with a critical eye. This paper will examine all of the Caldecott winners, but analysis will be based on the pictures, not the text. The artwork, subject, theme, race, and gender in the book will be assessed. Due to the vast number of Caldecott award winning books, it makes sense to group them by decade to ascertain common themes and threads and to assess an underlying reason for the changes …show more content…
Lon Po Po and Grandfather’s Journey represented Chinese and Japanese cultures. However, neither placed them in modern settings, as the former retold the story of Little Red Ringing Hood while the latter recounted the journey of a Japanese man to the United States in the early 1900s. On the other hand, Smoky Night was one of the best winners of the decade in terms of both representation and artistic style. Using thick acrylic paints and photographs of real item collages for the background, Smoky Night brought to life the LA Riots of 1992. The variety of mediums, artistic styles, and stories made the 1990s one of the more interesting …show more content…
Five of the seven winners featured anthropomorphic characters. While A Sick Day for Amos McGee had a white, older man as a main character, the anthropomorphic animals played a major role in the story. The Adventures of Beekle had an imaginary main character with two human children as secondary characters. Locomotive was mainly about train travel in olden days, but depicted middle class white families. Moreover, in Finding Winnie, a mother shared with her son how his great-grandfather found a bear, but all those characters were white, too. The first seven books of this decade severely lacked diversity. Hopefully, the next three books will show more
Little Red Riding Hood, by Paul Galdone, is a children’s book that inspires and is meant to remind the audience to follow directions. It inspires the audience by combining fable characters to real world experiences such as children talking to strangers and listening to your parents and being more careful when going places you are not as familiar with. While some of the dialogue of Little Red Riding Hood, by Paul Galdone could be more in the intended audiences reading level, it's interesting storyline, visual elements, and focus on the value of following directions make this book more than worthy of inclusion on list of the “Top 100 Children’s Books”.
High school students in many American schools first read this book in an English class, which has been a staple for many schools. A required reading assignment exposes many more people to the book. Even though the book is considered to be a children’s book by many, it is still enjoyed by people of all ages.
When people think of Dr. Seuss, they think; “Oh, the cat with the spontaneous black and white hat” or the author who wrote books about moral values and created art pieces that expressed politics. Dr. Seuss wrote children’s books not only to open up a child’s imagination about a fantastical world full of new words, creatures, and experiences, but also about eye opening issues. He promoted the importance of racial equality and other political issues, as well as the enduring hardships of life through his literature. Books like The Sneetches, The Lorax, I had trouble in getting to solla sollew and Oh, The Places You’ll Go! , are just a few of the many books Dr. Seuss wrote, but each of these books had a hidden moral message that could change the way people think. Seuss incorporated valuable lessons about everyday struggles in his books, and in doing so allowed readers to think and reevaluate their beliefs and make better choices about their lives.
The Russian writer Ivan Turgenev wrote in Fathers and Sons in 1862, "A picture shows me at a glance what it takes dozens of pages of a book to expound” (Turgenev 196). Mark Twain was a living testament to that belief because iillustrations were an integral part of Mark Twain’s published work. They embellished his stories, informed the reader, and often reflected his humor. However, today’s fictional novels rarely include illustrations beyond the cover and fly leaf. This lack of illustrations has become more the norm in the digital publishing world because the illustrations often do not translate well to the digital format. My research paper will delineate the reasons that illustrations were relevant and necessary for the 19th century publication and why they are less relevant in the digital age. I will show that illustrations played an essential part in the success of Mark Twain’s books (1) because he made them an integral part of his writing, giving clarity to his written words; (2) because of the subscription publishing model of his era, and, (3) because of Twain’s dependence on them to describe his characters. However, the digital and audio publishing market of today has lessened the impact of illustrations in modern literary works. In Twain’s 19th century era, books were often a work of art as well as a literary treasure. The books I read today on my e-reader or listen to on “Audible” versions -- even Twain’s books -- almost never have a visual impact like Twain’s books had in the 19th century.
Hare writes that the color white symbolizes purity and black stands for evil and derogatory referent and that “... theirs brains,..., at last has been washed white as snow.”. At a young age, children are taught how to read children’s books. ‘“Why are they always white children?” asked by a five-year old Black girl” (Larrick, 63), as many books seen are only white. Nancy Larrick wrote an article about children’s book and argued how children’s books portrays only whites in books, while there are many non white children and white children across the United States that are reading these books about white children. Larrick also points out that across the country 6,340,000 million non white children are learning to read and understand the American way of life in books which either omit them entirely or scarcely mention them in it (63), and of the 5.206 children's book, only 394 included one or more blacks, which was an average of 6.7 per cent (64). Children’s books will not contain a black hero/heroine because in the books, being depicted as a slave or a servant, or better yet to ...
Marcus, L. (1990). Garth Williams; his career spanning almost half a century, the artist's illustrations for children's books have become classics. (PW Interviews). Publishers Weekly. Retrieved from http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-8541967/garth-williams-his-career.html
Children literature is a term that refers to the texts written for children. The artist uses creative ways to ensure that children are provided with educational books, touching on a variety of themes. This paper will include comparison of two characters from the two texts, “Hana's Suitcase: A True Story,” authored by Karen Levine and “Charlotte’s Web,” written by E.B. White, with the aim of understanding ways in which problems are solvable as indicated by selected characters.
The opening of Kathleen O’Neil’s article is a discussion of children’s picture books being used throughout history as tools to teach children cultural expectations. O’Neil mentions that children’...
Perkins, Geroge, and Barbara Perkins. The American Tradition in Literature. 12th ed. Vol. 2. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009. Print
Judy Blume is recognized as a world famous children’s book author after selling over 85 million books around the world. It could be said that, “if she writes it, they will come”, since millions of young girls and young adult women pour over her words with fervor. The Pied Piper of Hamelin is a popular legend based on the town of Hamelin in Germany where a colorfully dressed man plays his pipe to lure rats, then later children, to their doom in the river. Blume has in essence captivated her audience for decades with her “pipe”, which is simple, easy to read texts covering topics for which tweens and teens have an insatiable appetite. However, instead of giving thoughtful, moral and entertaining books to impressionable minds, Judy Blume has
Perkins George, Barbara. The American Tradition in Literature, 12th ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009. Print
Mitchell, Sally. "Books for Children." Victorian Web. July 2002. National U of Singapore. 2 March 2003.
... (eds), Children’s Literature Classic Text and Contemporary Trends, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan in association with Open University
History tends to be full of incredible ironies such as when authors are only widely remembered for a work that they themselves loathed, such as the case with Sir Arthur Doyle and his creation, Sherlock Holmes. One of the greatest ironies in American literature is that Lousia May Alcott is solely remembered for writing the historical fiction novel Little Women. At that time, it was seen as a book written primarily for young women readers, perhaps a type of chick literature for its time. When it was first published it was also seen as something unique which attributed to its popularity with young women readers. Many today would characterize Little Women as just chic lit, but when looking through the lenses of history and the past and at the culture that made up the United States at that time, it becomes clear that this book is more of a satire of the young women’s literature of the era. Little Women is a coming of age story about the March girls, and their journey of growing up into proper young, civilized women, during the civil war. Little Women was originally written and published in two separate volumes, since the second volume was written as a sequel to the first. The second volume of Little Women was written as a hidden satire on the entire genre of young women literature, Alcott at the time was frustrated by her publisher and wrote second volume as a satire of what the publishers wanted, and by completely rejecting the over used literary tropes of her era. Alcott than used her skills as a gothic writer by slowly torturing Jo until her character was broken, and would than marry her suitor.
Literature has been part of society since pen met paper. It has recorded history, retold fables, and entertained adults for centuries. Literature intended for children, however, is a recent development. Though children’s literature is young, the texts can be separated into two categories by age. The exact splitting point is debatable, but as technology revolutionized in the mid-twentieth century is the dividing point between classic and contemporary. Today’s children’s literature is extraordinarily different from the classics that it evolved from, but yet as classic was transformed into modern, the literature kept many common features.