How Picturebooks Work

by Maria Nikolajeva, Carole Scott

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Criticism, Reference, Childrens, Books About Books, Literary Criticism, Writing

308 pages, Paperback

First published May 5, 2000

About the author

Maria Nikolajeva is an academic hailing from Russia, whose chief focus is on literary theory and the study of children's books.

"I was born in Russia, and I moved to Sweden in 1981.

Until 2008 I was a Professor of Comparative Literature at Stockholm University, Sweden. Now I am a Professor and Chair at the University of Cambridge, UK, which is about the highest an academic can get.

... Some highlights (of my career) include a Fulbright Grant at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; a Fellowship at the International Youth Library in Munich and H. W. Donner Visiting Chair at Åbo Akademi. In 2006 I was also made Honorary Professor at the University of Worcester, UK. In 1993-97 I was President of the International Research Society for Children's Literature. However, the crown of my success is the International Brothers Grimm Award 2005 from the Osaka Institute for Children's Literature, given for a life-time achievement in children's literature research.

I have written and edited twenty scholarly books and about three hundred articles and reviews. I have also published two young adult novels, two picturebooks, a cookbook and a memoir. My current research project is on literary cognitivism.

I have been a visiting lecturer all over the world: Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, Australia and South Africa.

I am married to Staffan Skott, who is a Swedish writer and journalist. We have five children and ten grandchildren.

My current hobbies are gardening, pottery, star gazing, papermaking and miniature making, and I also enjoy cooking and eating a good meal. Believe it or not, but I do read for pleasure sometimes. My favorite book is Winnie-the-Pooh. Recently, I have been re-reading classics, such as Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, Cervantes's Don Quixote and Melville's Moby-Dick."

- from Academia.edu

Reviews

[شیما · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was very informative and useful especially for people who work with children's book or people who want to be an illustrator
but the informations and different titles or subjects of the book were not orgnizes or coherent enough, which made reading the book a very difficult task...

[Rozhin · Rating 4 out of 5]

من برای پایان نامه کتاب رو خوندم و چیزای جالبی ازش یاد گرفتم. متن و تصویر تو کتابای تصویری باهم کار میکنن و هردوشون تو پیش بردن داستان مهمن. یکی از بخش هایی که دوست داشتم درمورد تفاوت تصویرسازی های شخصیت تامبلینا بود و اینکه چجوری داستان میتونه یکسان باشه ولی تصویرگری های متفاوت ازش حال و هوای کتاب رو عوض کنه کاملا و باهم متفاوتشون کنه.

[Hannah]

So, so good. A well done and thought provoking analysis of what makes the picturebook a distinct, unique literary product filled with many levels of nuance, irony, and intertextuality. While the many references to Swedish children's books (even given Nikolajeva's background) seemed odd given the American publisher, there were enough examples of American texts as well to make clear how picturebooks function, and how analyzing them requires skills from the schools of art, film, developmental, and literary theory.

[Picture Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very important text for understanding picture books. I learned so much about "picturebooks" as an art form through their extensive analysis of every aspect of picture books (from 'characterization' to 'narrative perspective' to 'mimesis and modality'). Interestingly for my Picture Books as Sequential Art Class they dismiss examining comics because "they have a poetics of their own, which has been the subject of several major studies." I found the chapters on characterization and setting particularly useful when thinking about how to develop my own picture book as a final in this class. It turns out that I will be using a very particular type of setting "Minimal or Reduced Setting" which has a history of its own based on aspects of child development theory that began after World War II. Obviously cartoons and comics have had minimal or reduced settings too, for a variety of esthetic and other reasons and I wish I understood how these ideas interacted better.

[Amy Layton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in preparation to a picturebook class I'm taking this fall--it's one of the required readings, and I can see why!  Though this book is small, it packs a lot of punch--complete with scans of illustrations to further make Nikolajeva's points.  

While using symbolic theory, art theory, and everything in between, she deconstructs how picturebooks are created, how they are perceived, and how they change across editions.  However, be warned--most of the picturebooks used are Swedish, so for us American readers, we may have a hard time relating to her examples.  Nonetheless, her analyses are concrete, sound, and clearly have a lot of thought behind them.  This is definitely a must-read for someone who wants to analyze picturebooks in the same way old classics are analyzed.

[Sarz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set book on Children's Lit MA

[Guilherme Smee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um livro de teoria para o livro ilustrado, mas que também pode ser aplicado para outras mídias que usam imagens e palavras como os quadrinhos. Ele é ótimo com terminologias, sendo o capítulo que mais gostei o sobre a perspectiva narrativa, foi por essa razão. Também me auxiliou muito o capítulo sobre Tempo e Movimento. Mas o ponto fraco do livro é um sem número de exemplos de livros infantis pouco familiares para o leitor brasileiro. Ainda que as autoras se disponham de uma grande descrição dos mesmos, e haver uma lâmina com algumas ilustrações dos interiores dos livros em questão, esse recurso acaba se mostrando enfadonho para quem não os conhece, mesmo que só de título.

[Alison · Rating 2 out of 5]

No rating for this Picture Book Class required scholarly reading.

[Car Mint · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely book ! I like it.

[Michael Fitzgerald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately for U.S. readers, a huge number of the books analyzed are Swedish.

[Barb Middleton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting scholarly look at dynamics between text and picture books from Sweden and America.

[Cristina Quesada · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my opinion, one of the best and more complete research publications about picturebooks.