History of illustration in childrens literature - Essay Example

?What might the history of illustration in children’s literature reveal about changing conceptions of childhood and child readers? Introduction Childhood is really an invention of the 20th century after the onset of industrialization changed the nature of work. At the turn of the century Beatrix Potter (1901) wrote a book about children and disobedience that also indicated the responsibility of children in the efforts for survival. It also indicated a shift in expectations in how children were being considered in relationship to their importance in contributing to survival. The Tale of Peter Rabbit is a story that provides context for honesty and hard work in contrast with being too clever for one’s own good and being disobedient. Anthony Browne (1998) wrote a book called Voices in the Park about perspectives that provides a look at childhood from a mid century perspective, even though the book was written in 1998. The development of the concept of childhood created a space in which the development of children’s literature was supported by the need for narratives about the experience of childhood. Children’s illustrated books are coded so that at a glance the meaning and emotional content of the narrative is both enhanced and reflected. Issues of gender and postmodern aesthetics are revealed through the way in which the books were originally crafted, the age of the Potter book making it subject to revision and reinterpretation through which the original order that the author put into the book sometimes being completely lost. The order with which Potter created her book is in contrast to the less orderly nature of the Browne book in which text and pictures are integrated in different ways to reflect the variety of perspectives from which the story is told. The text is integrated as a graphic element in a more profound way. The following paper will develop the concept of how the view of childhood has changed by looking at the graphic elements of the text as well as the messages that are revealed about gender, society, and the expectations of the childhood experience. Through examining Beatrix Potter’s story about the disobedient Peter that was written at the turn of the 20th century in comparison to Anthony Browne’s work that was written at the end of the century with far more protected children and a clear socio-economic disparity reflecting contemporary social issues, the changing nature of childhood in the social context is examined. Symbols in Picture Books One of the important aspects of creating a book for children is that there are only a few seconds in which to convey as much meaning as necessary in the pictures on the page. Moebus (2009, p. 311) points out that while a painting that is hung allows for hours of contemplation, the illustrations in a picture book only exist during the space of the recitation of the text narrative unless the reader specifically spends more time. Still, the length of time that it takes to read the text is most often the space of time that is spent looking at pictures. What must be conveyed are the emotions of the moment that is captured with a sparse number of codified and symbolic images that can be captured at a glance. The idea of childhood is portrayed in the imagery that is created for the telling of the experiences of the children in the books. Moebus (2009, p. 314) discusses the importance of codified imagery in the example of a doorway. A doorway expresses meaning in relationship to the meaning of threshold as it relates to the symbolism that suggests a moment of crossing from one space to the next. In a picture book there is little that is accidental and the phenomena of meanings that are developed through universal imagery becomes intended in order to create story advancement that is beyond words. The imagery of the text and the imagery of the illustration becomes a combined impact upon the reader which creates the world and the circumstances of the narrative. The development of the view of childhood is created through this graphical interpretation of childhood experiences. Another way in which the illustrations add to the idea of childhood is that they create a universe without implicitly defining that universe. In good illustration, the world in which the characters exist is can be imagined well beyond the details that have been provided (Moebus 2009, p. 312). As an example, in Beatrix Potter’s book Peter Rabbit shows only sparse suggestions of a lush garden and adjacent woods, but the imaginations takes the indications of these spaces and expands them to a more complex world that has only been suggested. Potter is discussed by Hollindale (2009, p. 96) for being a “specialist in concealment”. Her work was filled with hidden messages that were encoded in the symbols of her work. Graphic Artistry and Childhood Interpretation One of the problems with picture books, in particular old picture books, is that the arrangement of the author on the individual pages may have been changed. Popular books are re-evaluated and renewed so that they can be resold to new generations. The problem with interpretation or new illustrations is that the symbols and codes that have been created by the precise arrangement of the text and the pictures as done by the original author is violated. The text is part of the imagery, not just a verbal recitation of the narrative (Mackay 2009, p. 98). In the original work, Mackay (2009, p. 93) shows that the gutter in the middle of the book works as a dividing point between which the text is consistently on one side with the corresponding illustration on the other side. The text sits to the left with the illustration to the right, allowing the reader to read the text and then scan to the right in a natural progression to visualize the illustration into the creation of the world of Peter Rabbit. The symmetry of this creates a sense of order to the world of childhood as perceived by the people of the turn of the century. Children contributed to the work of survival, as the daughters do in this story as they are held to a higher expectation than Peter who does not contribute but is also not rebuked for his lack of contribution for the day. Scott (2009) writes that the order with which the book is written includes that fact that there are no words on the illustrations, separating the narrative script and the imagery. The story written by Browne (1998) near the end of the century shows a shift in the expectations on children. Where Peter’s and his siblings are left to their own devices for the day, the children in Browne’s book are closely monitored. They are dressed up for their day in the park, although to various degrees because of the differences in their socio-economic status, and they are kept close to their parents throughout the experience. The expectations of children to contribute to the family survival are exchanged for a belief that children should be coddled and protected from the world. In the world that Browne creates, a child is pulled out his playtime when another child looks ‘rough’, meaning that the child is not of the same socio-economic status and therefore cannot be trusted. Social Reflection Picture books have the capacity to reflect social ideas about culture and how childhood based ideas fit into culture. Goldstone (2009, p. 320) writes “It is the nature of picture books to be cultural artefacts reflecting societal mores, values, and beliefs”. This can be easily seen in Anthony Browne’s (1998) Voices in the Park as the dress of the people, the way in which they speak, and even the gender codes reveal a reach back in time that is more reminiscent of the 1950s and 60s when Browne would have been a child. He was born in 1946 meaning that his own memories of childhood would have begun at around the year 1950. One of the ways in which Browne’s (1998) work reflects society and the post-modern aesthetic is in being experimental. In creating a series of four perspectives on a day in the park, Browne has devised a way to reflect socio-economic disparities, gender differences, and age differences in the way in which the day is lived by each of the four main characters in their individual realities. In this experiment of time and space, the reflection of his time of childhood brought into a post-modern aesthetic is enhanced by the differences that are seen in each of the various worlds in which the story is told. The story that Brown (1998) writes is one in which the perspective definitively shifts, but according to Scott (2009, p. 103) the point of view in the Potter book also shifts through the positioning of the imagery in relationship to the rest of the world. Scott (2009, p. 103) writes that “This continual shift in perspective, scope of vision, and setting creates a fluctuating rather than a fixed viewpoint. The variability of shape, detail, and degree of perspective finds echoes in the verbal text that involves changes in extent”. The most common perspective in the narration is one of formality and objectivity, reporting the events with only a little empathy for Peter’s plight. Gender Picture books have a great deal to say about the differences between the genders. In The Tale of Peter Rabbit, the bad boy and the good girls show that there is a very specific belief in the actions of girls in comparison to that of boys. In addition, Peter’s mother has very little power to punish Peter and his only punishment for disobedience is going to sleep after a dose of chamomile tea (Mackey 2009, p. 98). This inability to punish her son can be construed as an inability of the female of the house to dominate the remaining male presence. The very graphic description of Peter’s father having had an ‘accident’ and ending up in a pie sets a president for male members of the family going into Mr. Macgregor’s garden. Her inability to do anything about the fate of her husband is mimicked in the disobedience and inability to punish Peter. One aspect that is similar in both stories is that the role of the father is that of a male dominant presence and the element of survival is placed on the shoulders of the male figure. The way in which Peter’s mother creates survival is in spite of the clear absence of his father. His empty role is a clear social status in which the poor widow is forced to create sustenance out of whatever she can manage, where the father who should be working is absence because of his lack of discretion in choosing to go into the garden of the neighbor. In Browne’s (1998) work the clear discouraged nature of the one father who is home to take his child to the park is base on his inability to get a job. These two images of the responsibilities of fatherhood and the position of the male role model are clear indications of gender roles being applied through stereotypes and norms. Conclusion The use of symbols and codified imagery is an important way in which the aspect of childhood has been developed in the 20th century in the two books that have been examined. There was order and expectation in Potter’s book where the work in Browne’s book was less ordered which corresponded with how the children were far more coddled. Children’s picture books reveal something of the society for which they are written creating a reflection of belief systems. Through gender reflections, it is clear that the male role is seen similarly between the Potter book and the Browne book with the male expected to be the bread winner. In both books the male role is failed, but in the potter book the children help to fill in the gap while the unemployed father fills the role of father and protector to his child without an expectation placed on the child to fill what as contemporarily is seen as an adult role. The role of childhood has changed dramatically in the 20th century and the two books reflect this through imagery, social expectations, and symbolism about the nature of life during their respective times. Bibliography Browne, Anthony (1998). Voices in the Park. Slideshare. [Online] Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/colin lieu/ voices-in-the-park-by-anthony-browne-6078839 Goldstone, Bette (2009). Postmodern experiments, in Montgomery, H. and Watson, N. J. (eds) Children’s Literature: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 320- 322. Hollindale, Peter (2009). Aesop in the shadows. in Montgomery, H. and Watson, N. J. (eds) Children’s Literature: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp 96-99. Mackey, Margaret (2009). Peter Rabbit: Potter’s Story, n Montgomery, H. and Watson, N. J. (eds) Children’s Literature: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 87- 95. Moebus, William (2009). Picture book codes, in Montgomery, H. and Watson, N. J. (eds) Children’s Literature: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 311- 320. Potter, Beatrix (1901). The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Scott, Carole (2009). Perspective and point of view in The tale of Peter Rabbit in Montgomery, H. and Watson, N. J. (eds) Children’s Literature: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 100- Read More