Nicholas Tucker is at present a lecturer in developmental psychology at the University of Sussex, having previously taught in schools and worked as an educational psychologist in London. Hc has written widely about children's literature which is his special interest and he plans to complete a book about it when time permits.

Nicholas Tucker

Looking at pictures

Brian Alderson Looki;Tg at ])ict~re Books ti~- catalogue for an exhibition mounted at the National Book Leaguc in London.

If a summary can bc made of the position which ttle catalogue tries to assert then it is perhaps the permanence of r.raditiona] values in book illustration. Book illustrators (even when they have wri t ten their own texts) are associates in a partnership; they are not there to overwhelm the substance of the book, but to work with it in the most fitting way that they can. Their responsibility is to reflect tru]y the imaginative tenor of the text (or, in the case of books wi thout text, of the subject) and to create a sequence or group of pictures which add up to a consistent whole. It is a recognit ion of this fact that lies behind the greatness of the English school of book illustration (and in children's books this includes such names as Blake and Mulready, Cruikshank and Lear, Doyle and Caldecott) and the present exhibit ion seeks to show that the tradition is not on]y still to be respected but can be abandoned only at the peril of vacuity or pretentiousness.

Among the virtues of the traditional approach to book illustration is its care for the details of a picture's narrative content and.design. This is not to say that there is always necessarily something going on in the illustrations, but that there is nearly always a nuance of detail for the eye to feed upon and one which in the best work will be in complete harmony (and may even be visually integrated) with the pr inted text.

Too often at present we are finding artists lured from the tradit ional style of book il]ustration by the graphic possibilities o f modern co]our printing processes or by the requirements of international syndicat ion - the one leading, as often as not, to a display of the painter's skill or lack of it, the other to triteness. While the present over-product ion of picture books continues it is doubt fu l if anything can be done about

Childre~z's literature in educatioll 14 38

this, but the necessarily limited 'historical' sections in the exhibition have been prepared in part to show that our own time has no monopoly in either commercial enterprise, technical accomplishment or artistic genius. If Maurice Sendak is the hero of this exhibition it is because (as he himself would be the first to recognize) he has the history of illustration in his bones.

The organizer of the exhibition makes no apology that neither his selection of books nor his remarks in the catalogue have been primarily made for the benefit of children. Naturally he .hopes that children will attend the exhibition and enjoy many of the books that are on display (at least they will be able to took at them or read them from cover to cover, which is more than happens at many like exhibitions). He will also not be unduly surprised if young visitors show a perverse liking for certain books which have been criticised in the following pages. It is the adults who control children's lives who have too often decided that there are no alternatives to such books, and it is for such adults that this experiment in practical criticism is intended, t3.A.

LOOKING AT PICTURES

Today there are more picture books published and more children around to look at them than ever before. Large new markets, at home and abroad, and the availability of dazzling new printing techniques have encouraged some very good artists to try their hand at book illustrations. A number are doing well out of this now', producing work they can feel proud of, in contrast to the rushed, anonymous artistry still present in many of the cheapest children's books. Publishers, too, are encouraging innovation, looking out for original, new artists as well as remaining faithful to the older ones, and reprinting the odd classic success from the past.

The range, then, is wide, and the contrast even with twenty years ago noticeable and very much in our favour. If there is still unease over the situation now, it tends to come from a feeling of too much being on show, with prospective buyers dazzled, sometimes even puzzled by the amount of riches displayed in front of them. A type of honest doubt can be heard at any book exhibition, parents' evening or whatever. Do children like some of the more wayout picture books, or are these really more for the parents? Can sexism, racism, class-consciousness or too many pictures of sweets in picture books have any harmful effects? Should we

LookM 2 at pictures 39

HelenM Bannerman Little Black 5ambo

M O'l)onnell and R Munro la~wt and Jolm series.

ban Little Black Sambo and the Jacket a~l(l_]Olm readers? Can some pictures terrify a child, or help stunt his imaginative growth by filling in too many details for him? What does the Design Centre really look for when it gives awards to new picture books each year - something that blends with the Swedish pine furniture ?

Floundering, the ambit ious consumer may turn to books about children's literature, but won ' t get much help; the first chapters on picture books usually tend to be brisk - and vague. Most critics in the national or weekly press are worse, though: the gang generally wheeled out each year just before Christmas, whether made up of reviewers' wives, the odd funny man. the fitm critic in lighter mood or a woman ' s page regular, make the banal, uninformed remarks, often with an excited air of discovery, that they are atl making that year at the mere t h u m p of a typewri ter - 'leaps off the page'; 'a feast for the eye'; 'a riot o f cotour' ; you can easily supply others for yourself.

Against this background, the comprehensive exhibit i6n of children's picture books put on at the turn of the year by the National Book League in London , was a most useful and t imely event. Many of the best (and a few of the worst) picture books were assembled in one room, one was allowed to handle most of them oneself, and there was a splendidly pungent catalogue wri t ten by the exhibit ion 's organizer, Brian Alderson. Children's book peolSle are sometimes accused of living in a small, incestuous world, where writers tend to review each other in favourable, not to say gushing terms, keeping their real opinions for a selective grapevine afterwards. Mr Alderson belies this; he can be as rude as anyone could wish and sometimes scholarly in the same breath. Every- one approved of the catalogue, f rom the Daily Telegraph to the Morning Star; it can certainly be read with profit whether one saw the exhibition or not . Mr Alderson was praised for h is ' ' ' or astringent , 'acid' 'acerbic'

qualities so of ten he must have eventually tired at this celebration of the milk of human unkindness. About his many more positive judgments , critics had less to say - it was almost as if everyone felt it was high time for someone to lay down some tough, critical standards. Now, perhaps, we may have a better idea o f what the whole picture book world adds up to, and where it might be going. Catalogue in hand, confusion at last gives way to reason, and astringent reason at that.

There is no doubt that Mr Alderson is a st imulating critic of individual books, and his selection for the exhibit ion was excellent. I am sure that a number of people will take a greater interest in picture books now,

Childre~l's literatTlre iTz educa~ioll 14 40

Charles Perrault Fairy Tales

aware o f new ways of discussing and trying to assess them. If this is what Mr Alderson chiefly intended to do, I think he has been successful. But if he wanted to do more than this, in the sense of trying to establish some sort of consistent, critical position over the whole of this stimulating vet still very undisciplined field, then I think there is room for doubt.

For example, when Mr Alderson reaches out towards any more general principles, his language can become noticeably woolly. Book illustrators, apparently, have a responsibility 'To create a sequence or group of pictures which add up to a consistent whole. ' A good enough banner to march under, perhaps, until you start asking what it means. What would an inconsistent whole look like, or a consistent half? In illustrated story- books, again, illustrators 'need to pace story and pictures uniformly through the book so that the one is constantly related to and working with the other. ' And elsewhere. "perfection in picture books is not to be sought in the predominance of one element over another but in the easy interlocking of all tile parts. ' Are either of these s tatements saying anything more than the obvious? One could hardly champion picture books where pictures and text did not relate and lock in easily with each other; at the very simplest level every child, let alorie critic, knows how irritating it is when illustrations don ' t appear next to their text, or get some of the detail wrong.

But Mr Alderson clearly means more than this, as he also lays it down that all good book illustrators have the responsibility ' to reflect truly the imaginative tenor o f the text. ' Another good slogan, but again hardly a critical toot of very much use. Because firstly, we have to discover what this ' imaginative tenor ' might be, an exercise that brings us into another field of criticism, with yet more pitfalls and subtleties of its own. But even if we could decide, say, that the true character of a story did demand a certain type of illustration, I think Mr Alderson is still proved wrong by his own exhibit ion: we can delight in illustrations and share the enthusiasm of the catalogue for pictures that are arguably very far away indeed from the 'imaginative tenor ' of their text.

Take Gustave DorE's magnificent illustrations to Perrault 's Fairy Tales. 'True to the spirit o f the text, ' writes the catalogue approvingly. We then turn to a picture f rom Tom Thumb, where the baffled, pop-eyed ogre is about to decapitate his sleeping daughters. The text itself reads as follows:

LoohiJ~g at pictJ~rc.; 41

Illustration bv Gustave Dor~ for Perrautt's To~l "l~zumb

The little ogresses all had the most lovely complexions, for, like their father, they ate fresh meat. But they had little round gray eyes, crooked noses, and very large mouths with tong and exceedingly sharp teeth, set far apart.

In other words. Perrault is elegantly defusing ~:he horror of this murder, by pointing out certain inhuman aspects in the incipient victims. Dole. on tile other hand, ignores this: he draws the sleeping children as lovable infants, all chubby cheeks and eye-lashes - in fact, very much like the illustration for Little Red Riding Hood later on in the book. This undeniably heightens tt~e tension in the picture, and gives it a power that might still cause some parents to wonder whether to have it in the house or not. 1 suppose it could be maintained that Dor6 was responding to a certain genteel sadism present in the Perrault collection. But it's also clear that he went beyond this, quite disregarding the text. The

Childre~z's literann'e iJl educarioJz 14 42

Kenneth Grahamc The II:i~ct i~7 the IgilIows

result is an uni%rgcttablc illustration, and who knows, possibly some- thing of a dlrill both for Dor6 and his readers. Are wc really the losers because 'the spirit o~" the text' has been eluded here, along with so much else in this splendid volume, where Gothic atmosphere replaces tile Court enlightenment Perrault was originally aiming at?

Or on another tack, consider Kenneth Grahame's "l'be ll"ind i~; the

II'illou,s. Originally Arthur Rackham was asked to illustrate this; he declined, and the job ,vent to E H Shepard. The results arc familiar: surely some of the best-loved illustrations we have. Some time later, though, Arthur R.ackham did start on his own illustrations, and this edition was published posthumously in 1940.

Both interpretations seem to me entirely different. Shepard goes in for cheerful, immediately appealing pictures: Mole dancing diminutively on a spring morning, or raising his snout pitedusly, searching for his lost home, Even Badger, that formidable headmaster figure, is somehow reduced to schoo]boy shape, falling out of his tiny bed wearing a striped nightshirt. The terror of the Wild Wood, or the sensuous lure of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, are barely hinted at.

With Rackham, on the other hand, we are in a harsher world. The countryside is wet, craggy and windswept, and the willow trees of the title constantly recur, gnarled and bleak. To survive in this environment, animals themselves have to be tougher; Mole, in his Lenin cap and enormous glasses, has rather less appeal, looking like a cross between a bleary-eyed bookworm and an unshaven agitator. Rat is a stout country gentleman; although Rackham didn't live long enough to illustrate the last chapters of the book, one can imagine the heroes bursting in I on the stoats and weasels looking re'ally quite formidable. In Shepard's version, it's rather like Richmal Crompton's Outlaws raiding the Hubert Lane gang.

Now 1 am sure both artists catch the spirit of the text; their pictures look so different simply because they respond to different aspects of that spirit. In the story, for example, animals change size quite prodigiously, in order to fit the plot: at one moment , Toad is picked up by his leg and thrown overboard by the fat barge lady, at another he is able to drive an adult-size motor car. It is quite permissible for Shepard and Rackham to percieve them so differently in this and other respects. And although the conservative side of me rejects the idea, 1 am forced to say that there are some aspects of the text that neither artist has reacted to: a certain mock-heroic quality, for example, that presumably a new illustrator may try to bring out for us one day.

Looki~ls , at l ) i c t . r e s 43

4 :�84 i ~:>�84 ~% i , ,

Pages from Brian Wildsmith's Mother Goose, Raymond Briggs' Mother Goose Treasury, Dean's New G(fr Book of Nurser 3, R hy rues Illustrated by Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone and Mervyn Peake's Ride a Cock-Horse

W I T T L E Tommy Tucker at,-, Sings for his suppe~, Xlghat shall ~e give I-,im_? White bread and t~utter, HQw shatl he Cur ~t Without e're ~ k~LCe? How ~all he m~tr** Withou* e 'm ~ wife?

it t 2~ ~1~ ~ 2

"x.

Nursery rhymes (2). Four examples of the presence of the artist in nursery rhyme books: Brian Wildsmith's stolid page (yet another Humpty Dumpty), Raymond Briggs's use of coltage, the Johnstones' 'modernism', and the imaginative vision of Mervyn Peake.

Childre~'s literat.re iH educatiol~ I4 44

If two such different artists and the possibility of even more can all catch the "imaginative tenor ' o f a text, then perhaps such a phrase is not really very useful, both being too generous for any particular application, and too subjective to lay down as a guide to anyone else's reactions. Perhaps tile point can be made more clearly in the case of nursery rhymes. What on earth could the 'spirit of the text ' be for such a range of settings, humour , emot ions and origins? Inevitably any one artist can only hope to catch a small port ion of this within a consistent artistic style, and this surely is what has happened. One can go to Randolph Caldecott for an idyllic, pre-industrial society; Leslie Brooke for chuckling humour : Willebeek Le Mair for delicacy: Harold Jones for the countryside; R a y m o n d Briggs for the grotesque and Peter Spier for historical reconstructions. No one artist could ever get it all, and of course there are many more to come. Tills is perhaps a point additionally worth making, in that the catalogue can be a little pedantic on this score. For example, Edward Lear 'established in his own drawings a definitive way of looking at his songs and limericks' (al though Mr Alderson does approve of the later interpretat ions by Edward Gorey). Is there really such a thing as a 'definitive' interpretat ion in art? Many young artists must be hoping there is not. I would support them; each age has its own preoccupat ions and ways of looking at things, and I can't see why children's illustrations should be any exception to this.

In short, almost any artist, eccentric or conventional, can catch some

of the spirit of the text, surely; what really matters after that is essentially to do with artistic skill and sensitivity, In the long run, I s,crongly suspect that Mr Atderson is simply saying, when he uses phrases such as ' inappropriate graphic styles,' that he likes good pictures and dislikes bad ones, Some of the basic points he makes th roughou t the catalogue can help us distinguish between the very good and the very bad, and hopeful ly will be of great use to the gormless type of book reviewer already discussed, But for the rest of the area in between these two polarities, Mr Alderson's criteria seem as subjective as anyone else's, and to that extent 1 am not sure any real critical debate over picture books for children has as yet properly begun.

Perhaps I could end by suggesting just one way in which we might go a little further, at least as far as very young children are concerned. There were no references in the bibliography of the catalogue to any literature on the psychology of perception. True, this does not amount , at the moment , to any substantial bo.dy of work, but I think we do know enough now to say that younger children do not always perceive pictures

LoohinA~ or pictnres 45

DONG wFr~] A LUMD'gOUS NOSE

W m ~ * ~ a a , r ~ ~ , ~ t , i ~ o ~ ~he g*~a C-tom~t~ah~ phir~

*.b.t~gh the v ~ ~ d gkmmy d*tk, '

"Pae-~ mm~ wi~ ~eerm a f~..y s t~ K

The Edward I.c:tr

Dong with a Lumin >us N >sc

p*<l,~*~, b, { , < ~ , d R,,~c

i \)~l i< ~ \ 1 , \ ! ;F ;

E d w a r d L e a r ' s D o n g

i n a p a g e from the Alderson catal o g u e .

The Dong. Edward Lear's drawing of his Dong with a Luminous Nose, and re- creations of the character by Leslie Brook, Gerald Rose and Edward Gorey.

in the same way as adults. Mr Atderson half refers to this poin~ in i~is introduction, but then turns it aside.

He hopes that children will attend the exhib'ition and enjoy many o f the books that are on display .... He will also not be unduly surprised if young visitors show a perverse liking for certain books which have been criticised in the following pages.

Chihh'e~z'x literature i~ ed~catio11 14 46

Ladybird Publications .'i First Piczure Book

Thomas Matthieson First Things

Maureen Roffey ]ndoors

Dick gruna Cinderella

But if we are to keep credibility with parents, educators and librarians who to a certain extent rely upon experts for informed judgments, 1 really think we must take this sort of issue a little more seriously. Brushing aside, or not knowing about some of the habits and idiosyncracies of a small child's perception, can sometimes lead us into adult-oriented judgments that may not always be appropriate.

For example, when compari~ng A Ladybird First Picture Boole with tqrxt

Things, another book of familiar objects this time made up of photo- graphs, Mr Alderson finds 'little to choose between the exactness of theh" renderings.' But from the two examples }re reproduces in his catalogue alone, and findings elsewhere in this field, it's quite clear that drawings can offer more to children than photographs a t this early age. By omitting background detail, and slightly exaggerating the salient features of any principal object, a painting can have an immediacy for a child that makes for quick and easy recognition. So mere 'exactness' on its own, as a critical criterion, may not really be enough when discussing this type of book, with its clear function of introducing the youngest child to pictures of recognisable objects.

Again, when talking about lndoors - another picture book doing the same sort of thing - Mr Alderson finds that 'the huge difference in scale between the toothbrush and the facing telephone are (sic) decidedly disconcerting.' To whom, I wonder? Small children would hardly mind, as they have little sense of perspective anyhow; they are far more likely to react to these pictures in terms of whether they like toothbrushes and telephones or not. Young audiences are apparently not, on the whole, interested in the treatment of any subject so much as the intrinsic interest of the subject itself.

Mr Alderson is also pretty hard on Dick Bruna's version of Cinderella: 'the oddest of the examples given here, since it shows the application of Bruna's well-known style to a narrative for which it is, 'by its very nature, unsuited.' Again, I wonder why? Bruna's artwork with its heavy contour lines and emblematic detail is very much suited to the young, untrained eye. As for Cinderella, this is a story that belongs to all of us; there can be no standard text of something originally drawn from a widely ranging oral cultnre. If Perrault wants to slip in a glass slipper and details of the fabulous coach and footmen, if Bruna wants to cut out almost everything else in order to get across to the youngest and smallest concentration span, let them; they are both in a tradition of storytelling that has always adjusted to its immediate audience. Later on

First things. A comparison of the treatment of similar subjects in a photograph and a picture (above}; and of the changed page opening for the 1968 and 1973 editions of Indoors (below).

Cinderella 's Ugly Sisters as seen by an a n o n y m o u s artist ; Errol" Le Cain : Shirley Hughes and Dick Bruna.

iiiI

Cinderella. Four portraits of the ugly sisters.

Looking at ?ict.res 49

Renate Meyer Let's PLp,' .~lu ms ,~id Dads

P.enatc Meyer Hide aud Seek

that child might read a fuller version, or see a film, pan tomime, ballet or even opera based somehow on the same text, all enjoyable whatever the other divergencies f rom Perrault, Grimm or whoever else you start f)om.

Lastly, take the work of Renate Meyer. Let's Play Mums am] Dads appears in the early About the House section of the catalogue, and Hide aud Seek comes in the section Stories wi thout Words, again ostensibiy aimed at the younger , preliterate child. Mr Alderson is guarded about both books, and makes the point that Let's Play Mums aud Dads may be 'a picture books that studies children rather than one which wit! directly engage their attention.. ' 1 agree with him there; the dark co]ours, overlapping detail, diffuse shapes and uncertain storyline, would in my est imation make both books, however striking for adults, virtually impenetrable for most children, a criticism t would a]so direct at some of the other books included in these early categories.

But then, who are we really aiming at in our picture books? i don ' t think we can afford to duck this question, however much we may all want to; after all, it 's the one that the public is most interested in. Can we share Mr Alderson's enthusiasm for the artist's handwri t ten script in some picture books, even if this makes them harder for a young audience to read? Do we app!aud a Renate Meyer for her fine artwork, even if it may not appeal to most children? Are we less pleased with a Dick Bruna. who perhaps reverses this situation? Is the psychology of percept ion a relevant field for a critic to know about, at least so far as younger children are concerned? Are there finally any firm critical criteria we can eventually agree to when it comes to assessing any picture book, that will be meaningful to critics, consumer and those publishers reputably worried about producing too many indifferent picture books these days? Mr Alderson's catalogue notes, readable and erudite as they are, give no answers to any of these questions and to a certain extent adds to the confusion, by veering between a child's eye view at one moment , and an adult 's perception at the next. Whether he, or anyone else, can actually get much further with some of these questions, it's impossible to say, but it would be nice if someone could at least try. Looki~g at Pictures I973 may have done a good deaI in providing the raw material to get the debate started, but the impor tant question seems to me where it should really go from here.

Brian Alderso~ writes:

What 1 wished to say about picture books was cast in the form of an

Chiletren's litenlrure in eJttcatioil 14 50

exhibit ion plus catalogue because I considered that my judgments could thus be tested against the evidence itself. While I am glad that Mr Tucker thought some of the individual criticisms stimulating, I am sorry that he found the exposit ion of general principles woolly, or obvious, or, sometimes, oddly, both things together. I had hoped that my general s tatements , coupled with the examples, would have made the arguments plain.

To answer his points one by one would be a tedious undertaking, especially since it would mean repeating points already made at length in the catalogue. I would, for instance, take issue with his interpretat ion of the Dor~ picture where he seems to have wilfully misunders tood the point that I was making. In the first place he has converted my phrase 'spirit of the t e x t ' i n t o the more basic ' letter of the text: ' in the second place - and in his terms - I do not think that Dor6 does give us 'lovable infants, etc.' (they are certainly not twins to Little Red Riding Hood - some being notably truculent-looking, though not, I admit, very crooked about the nose); and in the third place the t ruth to 'spirit ' was less concerned about the arguable details in one picture and more about Dorfi's imaginative visualizations and his reproduct ion of these through the elaborate engravings - a sophistication, but not an inappropriate

one, of the original woodcu t techniques.

Of greater interest in Mr Tucker 's review, however, is the whole question of the criteria that we use in judging not only picture books but all books for children. If Mr Tucker dismisses as meaningless or self-evident a detailed definit ion of illustration laid down in relation to actual examples, I believe that concepts of 'consistency, ' of 'uni formi ty ' and of imaginative sympa thy with texts are of prime importance to the critic if he is to do anything more than 'most critics in the national or weekly press' whom Mr Tucker makes fun of but does not name. Certainly there are many other issues which must also be considered, such matters, for instance. as content , graphic style and even that most dangerous of ideas ' the child's eve view,' but these will tend to be secondary, wi th regard to the latter point , for instance, a criterion based initially on proven appeal to children (if such appeal cali be proven) or upon ' the psychology of perception ' will lead to judgments that have nothing to do with illustration as such. On the one hand we shall say "anything goes so long as the children like it' and on the other we shall say 'anything goes so long as our child psychologists give it their imprimatur ' : bo th of which may be legitimate selection procedures, but neither of which is criticism.

Loo kill 2 at pictures 51

LookiTtg at Picture Boobs I9 7.3 was designed chiefly to be an examination of the nature of illustration in a class of books published for children. Naturally, therefore, the possible character of the child's response was given some consideration, but onlv within the larger compass of an allegiance to quality in illustration. That there must have been some 'veering' I suppose was inevitable, but I hope that, in the main, my statement of what 1 understood by 'quality' was slightly more help in establishing critical principles than Mr Tucker allows.

~efere~ces Alderson, Brian (1973) Lookino at Picture Books London: National Book League Bannerman, Helen M (] 8997 The Story o f Little Black Sambo London:

Chatto and Windus; New York: Platt and Munk Bruna, Dick (1968) Cinderella London: Methuen Grahame, Kenneth (1908) The ~r in the Ir London: Methuen; New York: Scribner Matthieson, Thomas (1967) First Things London:Collins Meyer, Renate (1969) Hide and Seek London: Bodley Head Meyer, Renate (1970) Let's Play Mums and Dads London: Bodley Head O'Donnell, M and Munro, R (various dates) Janet and John series Welwyn : Nisbet Perrault, Charles (1867) Perratdt's Fairy Tales New York: Dover (1969) Roffey, Maureen (1973)]ndoors London: Bodtey Head Wingfield, Ethel and Harrey (1970) A Ladybird First Picture Book Loughborough: wills and Hepworth