Communicating Knowledge through Picture Books
In class this semester, we have studied the changes that have occurred in forms of knowledge and in the communication of that knowledge throughout history. We have examined the shifts from folk knowledge to oral knowledge to written knowledge to printed knowledge. However, in all of these areas, we have focused largely on the knowledge and communication that pertains to the realm of adulthood. Shifts in the prominent knowledge form of the day have also affected children. Furthermore, a relatively recent shift specific to children’s literature has occurred within the realm of print knowledge, creating a different form of communicating knowledge that we have not specifically discussed: the picture book. Although adult and children's literature shares the codex book format, children's picture books are a unique form of communicating knowledge and have distinct advantages because their design conveys information in a way that is different from other more textual books.
Just as a written manuscript allows people to understand and process information in a different way than they ever could with a purely oral tradition, a picture book makes possible learning on a different level from a text-only book. The words presented are only part of the experience; pictures provide an aid to understanding those words and even offer additional information not necessarily stated in the text. The iconic signs provided by the pictures(which represent ideas directly) and the conventional signs presented by the words(which represent ideas indirectly, through a code) interact in an infinite number of ways to make the process of “reading” a picture book much more than just reading (Nikolajeva 1-2). In fact, adults sometimes miss out on this holistic process. Because of the prominence of text in their minds, they will ignore the pictures that go along with it. In doing so, they miss out on an entire aspect of the picture book experience, because a picture book is “visual art as well as verbal art” (Smith 305). By ignoring the pictures, adults fail to engage in the “hermeneutic circle” of picture book reading, wherein the reader gains expectations from one component of the book (verbal or visual) about the other component, then switches to that other to gain more expectations about the first, resulting in a back-and-forth process that is “an ever-expanding concatenation of understanding” (Nikolajeva 2).This helps explain why children like to read a picture book over and over and over again, while adults often tire of the same story much more quickly. By focusing on only half of what a picture book is, they miss the exciting and entertaining experience that text and pictures together can provide in a way other books cannot.
Beyond the merely enjoyable or entertaining interactions between pictures and text, illustrated children’s books offer a representation of a story that is completely different from a purely oral or textual story. Oftentimes the illustrations in a picture book are not supplementary but rather crucial to understanding the meaning of the story. This is shown in an example of a picture book originally written in Swedish but later retold using the same pictures in English. The Swedish text tells the story of a lazy, sweet dog, while the English text constantly talks about the dog’s heroism. The following two versions of the text accompany the exact same picture of the dog cowering under a couch.
Original Swedish Version:
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.
Retold English 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.
Only the pictures that go along with the ironic English version of the text allow the reader to see past the irony of the text and understand the true personality of the dog (Nikolajeva 32-34). Without them, the actual meaning of the story would be lost.
Another example of the importance of the interaction between text and picture in storybooks comes from another book originally written in Swedish called The Wild Baby Gets a Dog. In this example, the importance of the text itself for making sense of the pictures is highlighted. The book depicts the baby opening a present that is a stuffed dog. However, his reaction is not clearly discernible from the illustration – the emotion is not clear. So in the two different versions, two different reactions are actually presented. In the Swedish, the baby “becomes almost shy” before suddenly realizing that the dog is not real and shouting (the words are even placed in all capitals), “THE BODY IS MADE OF CLOTH!” In the English, the baby recognizes immediately the true nature of the present and cooly and objectively expresses his disappointment, with the text reading “There’s a puppy in here, but the puppy’s not real” (Nikolajeva 35-36). Though both versions of the story give the same overall outline of the event, the experience of the reader and their understanding of what the baby experienced are significantly different. This example highlights the advantage of flexibility in interpretation that picture books offer. Viewed independently of their text, they give opportunity for the “reader” to develop their own version of the story. Even when a reading of the text is later added, the initial expectations about the story based on the pictures can influence a child’s interpretation of the story. This gives picture books the huge advantage of catering to the imagination in ways other books simply do not.
Such variations in understanding and experience would not be possible in the conventional format of a printed book without illustrations, or with only minimal drawings used to supplement a text. This, along with the enjoyment provided through the interaction of words and pictures, makes picture books a unique form of knowledge communication that is a superior form of literature for children.
Nikolajeva, Maria and Carole Scott. How Picturebooks Work. New York: Garland Publishing, 2001. Print.
Smith, James Steel. A Critical Approach to Children’s Literature. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1967. Print.
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