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Picturebooks: The Art of Visual Storytelling
“The genius behind simplicity” (from the San Diego Union Tribune)
by Martin Salisbury and Morag Styles
Laurence King Publishing; 192 pages; $35
Just before a 1982 event at the San Diego Museum of Art where the two of them were to speak, Maurice Sendak looked in the direction of Ted Geisel (Dr. Seuss) and told me, “There’s more there than meets the eye.” He meant that Geisel was a genius too often taken for a whimsical lightweight. But in saying “There’s more there than meets the eye,” Sendak could just as easily have been talking about the picturebook, that unique kind of art object the two of them are famous for.
Because they are given to the very young and serve as a stepping stone to reading, few notice that picturebooks hide a complexity behind their hard wrought and apparent simplicity. We have now a wonderful study that assesses this complexity: “Children’s Picturebooks” by two British academics, Martin Salisbury (an artist and illustrator) and Morag Styles (a scholar of children’s literature).
This is the world of Dr. Seuss’ “The Cat in the Hat” and Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are,” Jean DeBrunhoff’s “The Story of Babar” and Ludwig Bemelmans’ “Madeline,” Wanda Gag’s “Millions of Cats” and Beatrix Potter’s “The Tale of Peter Rabbit,” Ezra Jack Keats’ “The Snowy Day” and Eric Carle’s “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” and many more. To be sure…
