ENGL 3333: Children's Literature—Texts and Contexts
Professor SiglerVisual Principles for Picturebooks
From Molly Bang's Picture This: How Pictures Work
(New York: SeaStar, 2000).
1. Smooth, flat, horizontal shapes give us a sense of stability and calm.
2. Vertical shapes are more exciting and more active. Vertical shapes rebel against the earth's gravity. They imply energy and a reaching toward heights or the heavens.
3. Diagonal shapes are dynamic because they imply motion or tension.
4. (a) The upper half of a picture is a place of freedom, happiness, and triumph; objects placed in the top half often feel more "spiritual."
(b) The bottom half of a picture feels more threatened, heavier, sadder, or more constrained; objects placed in the bottom half also feel more "grounded."
(c) an object placed higher up on the page has "greater pictorial weight."
5. (a) The center of the page is the most effective "center of attention." It is the point of greatest attraction.
(b) The edges and corners of the picture are the edges and corners of the picture-world.
6. White or light backgrounds feel safer to us than dark backgrounds because we can see well during the day and only poorly at night.
7. We feel more scared looking at pointed shapes; we feel more secure or comforted looking at rounded shapes or curves.
8. The larger an object is in a picture, the stronger it feels.
9. We associate the same or similar colors much more strongly than we associate the same or similar shapes.
10. We notice contrasts, or put another way, contrast enables us to see.
Resources About Visual Literacy and Picture Books
Barbara Bader. American Picturebooks: From Noah's Ark to the Beast Within. New York: Macmillan, 1976.
Molly Bang. Picture This: How Pictures Work. 1992. New York: SeaStar, 2000.
Volume 19, Children's Literature (1991).
Volume 9, Children's Literature Association Quarterly (Spring 1984).
Barbara Z. Kiefer. The Potential of Picturebooks: From Visual Literacy to Aesthetic Understanding. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Merrill, 1995.
Sonia Landes. "Picture Books as Literature." ChLAQ 10: 2 (Summer 1985): 51-54.
Volumes 7-8, The Lion and the Unicorn (1983-84).
Donna Rae MacCann and Olga Richard. The Child's First Books: A Critical Study of Pictures and Texts. New York: H.W. Wilson, 1973.
Steve Moline. I See What You Mean: Children at Work with Visual Information. York, ME: Stenhouse, 1995.
Perry Nodelman. The Pleasures of Children's Literature. 2nd Ed. White Plains, NY: Longman, 1996.
---. Words About Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children's Picture Books. Athens, GA: U Georgia P, 1988.
Joseph H. Schwarcz. Ways of the Illustrator: Visual Communication in Children's Literature. Chicago: ALA, 1982.
Maurice Sendak. Caldecott and Company: Notes on Books and Pictures. New York: FSG, 1988.
Ellen Handler Spitz. Inside Picture Books. New Haven: Yale UP, 1999.