How Picturebooks Work

Maria Nikolajeva, Carole Scott

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138126930
• eBook ISBN: 9781136771514
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

How Picturebooks Work is an innovative and engaging look at the interplay between text and image in picturebooks. The authors explore picturebooks as a specific medium or genre in literature and culture, one that prepares children for other media of communication, and they argue that picturebooks may be the most influential media of all in the socialization and representation of children. Spanning an international range of children's books, this book examine such favorites as Curious George and Frog and Toad Are Friends, along with the works of authors and illustrators including Maurice Sendak and Tove Jansson, among others. With 116 illustrations, How Picturebooks Work offers the student of children's literature a new methodology, new theories, and a new set of critical tools for examining the picturebook form.

CHAPTER 1 Whose Book Is It?

DOI: 10.4324/9780203960615-2

Author-Illustrators and Author-Illustrator Teams

In our introduction we touched briefly on the balance between pictures and text produced by a single picturebook creator (both author and illustrator), picturebooks created by an author-illustrator team, and those where author and illustrator work separately, without collaboration.

We will begin by examining some products of these relationships, for a look at situations where ownership of the book is problematic dramatizes the complexity of the relationship between the verbal communication and the iconic communication that picturebooks embody—that dynamic interrelationship and creative tension between the two modes of communication that we are exploring. While purists may declare that the iconotext is all and supports whatever interpretations seem appropriate, the interpretation of the relationship between image and text also becomes increasingly complex as the number of people involved in its creation increases and their collaboration diminishes. Multiple ownership and multiple intentionality lead to ambiguity and uncertainty in the validity of the interpretation.

Many readers will have experienced the jolt that comes when the familiar beloved books of childhood are met with in other forms. As children we relate to our picture books in a holistic fashion, merging sensations of the eye and the ear (for first we are read to), which marries the image and the sound of the words, and later, as we learn to read, the look of the words. Thus when Beatrix Potter’s stories appear with other illustrations, they are no longer Potter picturebooks. Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat in the Russian version with Russian illustrations is certainly not Theodore Geisel’s. The American version of Den vilda bebiresan is another surprise. Not only has the book been translated with a cavalier freedom, but illustrations have been reordered, some have been cut out of the book, and one has been partially obliterated. Whose book is this?

John Stephens has some comments about the relationship between text and image in what he calls “intelligent picture books.” He believes that an important principle is

a capacity to construct and exploit a contradiction between text and picture so that the two complement one another and together produce a story and a significance that depend on their differences from each other. Further, because individual pictures do not have grammar, syntax or linear flow, but freeze specific moments in time, rarely presenting more than one event within a single frame, this relationship between text and picture is one between differently constructed discourses giving different kinds of information, if not different messages. Hence the audience will experience a complicated process of decoding, so that a text which by itself is a series of inconsequential events structured as a language lesson, and as such might be expected to strive for clarity and precise, simple meaning, becomes only a surface beneath which other kinds of meaning can be perceived, and meaningfulness itself becomes problematic.¹

This comment raises a point central to our discussion. How do we approach the “contradiction between text and picture” and decide whether it is a contradiction that leads to the two “complementing one another” and producing “a story and a significance that depend on their differences from each other,” or whether it is a contradiction that simply creates confusion and ambiguity—the kind of contradiction that arises from a mismatch of text and image, which might be due to an author and illustrator who do not work as a team, to a series of illustrators for a single text, or a series of authors for a series of illustrations.

Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902) provides an excellent example to begin this examination. If we look at the opening doublespread (picture on the left, words on the right), there are some apparent contradictions, some devices to keep the reader alert and involved. The picture is quite simple and straightforward, and the reader is drawn directly into it since mother rabbit looks us right in the eye. But the text tells us there are four little rabbits and the picture shows only three. Knowing that there is one creator for the book encourages us to look more closely and ask whether the hind legs and tail on the left belong to a rabbit whose head is underneath the tree root rather than to the rabbit whose head appears the other side of the root. With greater discrimination, it becomes increasingly apparent that the body of the rabbit would have to be long and rather distorted to reach the head on the other side of the root. Beatrix Potter’s drawings are so anatomically correct that it is safe to conclude that the tail must belong to the fourth rabbit. This little puzzle immediately sets up a tension between picture and text, because we want to figure out how to resolve the discrepancy. And because we know that Potter is responsible for both image and text, we know that this apparent discrepancy is intended. When we read the book next time we know that it is probably Peter who is checking out his surroundings underground instead of taking his cue from what his mother is looking at.

Complementary iconotext created by Beatrix Potter in The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

Another device is in the text. Unlike the usual left to right motion, the names of the rabbits are listed in a slanted line that leans, like a backslash, from right to left, bringing the eye toward the picture and the puzzle of the four names and three rabbits. The text and picture are thus interrelated in several ways: in the apparent discrepancy between the information that is imagistically (iconically) and verbally (symbolically) presented; in the impact on eye movement that plots a back-and-forth pattern between text and picture pages, reinforced by the line of names that points to the picture; and in the interpretive questions provoked by the behavior of the rabbit whose head is hidden from the reader—questions that introduce the subversive message of the book (motives for behavior may be hidden, subversive, antiauthoritarian, and exciting and adventurous).

This kind of confident interpretation becomes problematic when the book’s “ownership” is shared. We will first examine what happens to a book translated from the original language to another. The question that challenges us is, what kind of transformation takes place when the text is translated? Is this now another work altogether? This comparison will reveal more about the tension between text and pictures, for here we have the illustrations held constant, while different texts are applied.

“Her brilliant mind is always at work.” Pija Lindenbaum’s Boodil My Dog.

Our first example is Pija Lindenbaum’s picturebook, Boken om Bodil (1991; Am. Boodil My Dog, 1992). One of the earliest illustrations shows the dog lying belly up in an armchair, head and two paws hanging down to the ground, totally oblivious to her surroundings. The original Swedish text in literal translation reads:

Boodil the dog in her usual spot. She is nice, but lazy and stubborn

—never pays attention.

Although early morning turns into late morning

She is not in a hurry.

And she is not even tempted

By a big piece of almond cake.

The American version (incidentally, the title page tells us it’s not “translated” by Gabrielle Charbonnet, but “retold” by her) reads as follows:

This is Boodil, my dog.

She’s sleeping in her favorite chair.

My dad used to think it was his chair,

but he knows better now.

Boodil is a bullterrier. She’s

the best dog in the whole world.

Her brilliant mind is always

at work. Her guard is never down.

A second illustration shows Boodil cowering under the sofa away from the vacuum cleaner. The Swedish version in literal translation reads:

But, when the floor must be cleaned

—Boodil knows all about it—

then she becomes scared and small.

You can wonder where she has disappeared to.

The American version:

Boodil has never really gotten

used to the vacuum cleaner.

It probably looks like a dangerous enemy to her. I bet

only Boodil’s amazing superdog

self-control keeps her from

ripping the vacuum to pieces.

The pictures are identical in each of these versions, as is their depiction of the animal, which is unmistakable. The Swedish text simply provides a little more detail about what we already know; text and pictures are complementary or symmetrical, and the voice of the speaker is straightforward, unemotional, objective and detached. But the relationship between the Swedish text and pictures versus that between the American text and pictures is completely different. To begin with, since the American text and pictures are completely contradictory, the reader first asks whether the relationship is ironic, or whether the perception implied in the text is simply mistaken. Of course it is both: the narrator loves the dog and is unable to see its true nature; every action is misinterpreted in a rejection of reality, which is replaced by a heroic ideal—what the speaker would like the dog to be. The author of the text is being heavily ironic, creating a discrepancy so apparent that it makes the reader laugh. But because the persona is innocent and loving, although the reader’s laughter provoked by the dog is loud, the laughter at the person’s misapprehension is softer and somewhat poignant. One could say that the Swedish original is ironically humorous too, in an understated fashion, because people feed the dog (with almond cake yet!) and allow it to take possession of the most comfortable chair. Even so, the complexity of the dual perception is in no way present. The two books are not the same even though the pictures are unchanged, and we must make different interpretations.

“Boodil’s amazing superdog self-control.”

The Wild Baby books have made an international impact and offer a more complex situation for examination since the series is produced by the partnership of Barbro Lindgren and Eva Eriksson rather than a single individual. We will be analyzing their teamwork in detail in later chapters, so we will simply say here that they work collaboratively so that interpretation of intent is not problematic. Instead, we will examine what happens to their book, Den vilda bebin får en hund (1985), when it moves into two different cultures, in its British and its American versions. To make a fair comparison, we’ve made a literal translation of the Swedish text to compare with the rhymed text of the British and American verses, and have selected one small but significant sequence where the baby opens up his birthday present to find a toy dog in place of the real dog he had hoped for.

While the verbal translation would seem the most important, the change in layout also demands our attention. The Swedish original and the British translation both present the sequence on one double-spread, with one picture and a verse on the verso, and two more pictures on the recto, although the Swedish version has a three-line verse, picture, five-line verse, four-line verse, picture, while the second page of the British version differs in that it has picture, ten-line verse, picture. The American version changes this, expanding the sequence to two doublespreads (four pages). On the first page comes the verse, with the picture on the facing page. Turning over we find the verse, picture, verse sequence similar to the top half of the Swedish version, but then a two-line verse and the final picture on a page of their own.

The layout of The Wild Baby Gets a Dog, by Barbro Lindgren and Eva Eriksson, is changed in the American edition.

Let us now concentrate on the unfolding of events and emotions of just one page (two in the American version). In the original Swedish text, the baby’s descent into disappointment is the first emotion featured, because for a moment he is convinced that the dog is real: “The baby becomes almost shy,” says the text, and then he is hit with the realization that “THE BODY IS MADE OF CLOTH!” (The impact of the realization is expressed through capital letters.)

The picture of the baby holding up the cloth dog by its back accompanies this verse, for the baby’s head is level with the top line and the left of the picture underneath its words, although the picture extends to the right and below the verse. The emotion of the baby is hard to tell from the drawing. Surprise? Dismay? We must rely on the words here for the specifics.

The next emotion is disappointment giving way to anger: “I WANTED A DOG THAT COULD BARK! I WANTED A DOG THAT WAS ALIVE, NOT ONE LIKE THIS! I AM GOING TO SHOOT IT WITH MY GUN!”

In the next stanza the dog is forgotten. Mama gets the cake, the baby devotes his attention to it, eats it, and then opens his other presents.

Then Mama gets the cake

the baby is very fond of it

He eats it up in half a second

and then opens parcel after parcel.

The picture provides the illustration for just two of the events cited in the verse, juxtaposing what in the text are two separate rather than concurrent events: “I am going to shoot it with my gun,” and “Then Mama gets the cake.” The baby stands on one leg pointing a gun as big as he is toward the already lifeless dog, while Mama holds the cake above the toy toward the child. While the baby is presented as a focus of energy, the facial expression not clearly communicating specific emotion, the mother’s posture and expression openly express her aim to please.

The U.S. version makes an interesting comparison. First, the drama of the initial misrecognition is gone. This baby is savvy and more sophisticated; he isn’t taken in for a moment, and his disappointment is expressed in an objective analysis of the toy.

There’s a puppy in here,

but the puppy’s not real.

Admittedly this statement is “exclaimed with a squeal,” but the diction is controlled. The picture intervenes, placed centrally in the middle of the page, with no overlapping text.

The text continues in the same sedate manner. “It’s made out of rags, it can’t run, it can’t bark.” And then a momentary “I” statement, “I can’t ever take it for walks in the park.” There is no mention of the gun, no mention of violence, but an a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Series Editor’s Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Illustration Acknowledgments
• Half Title Page
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Whose Book Is It?
• Chapter 2 Setting
• Chapter 3 Characterization
• Chapter 4 Narrative Perspective
• Chapter 5 Time and Movement
• Chapter 6 Mimesis and Modality
• Chapter 7 Figurative Language, Metafiction, and Intertext
• Chapter 8 Picturebook Paratexts
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index of Names
• Index of Titles
• Subject Index