Picture Books: W is for Wild and Wonderful

Many of the picture books on A-Z List 5 are from my childhood. Understandably so, since I hearkened back to my childhood to capture what I loved then about picture books. 

I still love picture books. In fact, on occasion when I've gotten them out of the library, I've had to explain--without letting a "tone" creep into my voice--that I am not actually getting them for my nieces and nephews or for kids at church (sometimes, I have been, but lots of times, no). 

I find the divisions in libraries useful for doing searches. I find them utterly useless and unnecessarily status-oriented when it comes to interest. I do not divide up my interests by age and didn't when I was younger. When I was a teen, I would make a counterclockwise circuit in the Schenectady Public Library (as it was then arranged). At the door, I would start with adult fiction and mysteries, move to teen literature, circle around to audios, walk through non-fiction (I read more non-fiction now than I did then), cut across the library to the new books and end in the children's section: picture, chapter books, and non-fiction. 

I haven't changed that much! 

For "W," I chose David Wiesner, who is not an author I encountered as a child. And I love his books! Like the Salamander Room, Wiesner uses mostly images to communicate a story & concept. 

Wiesner raises an interesting problem--the books are very much PICTURE books. Some of them use no text at all. So what separates them from, say, a Calvin & Hobbes comic strip, one of those that doesn't use dialog?

A comic strip is a very specific medium, which depends on the eye scanning forward. It uses boxes to punctuate the joke or point. 

A full page image is somewhat different than a comic box. The viewer is invited to linger on the page. 

In addition, size does make a difference. I have a beautiful poster by an illustrator on my bedroom wall. Shrunk down to book size, it doesn't have the same impact. Shrunk down to a comic strip, it might lose impact entirely. 

Another difference is that comic strips rely on anecdotes. The joke is enough. We don't necessarily need to know how Calvin was, ah, rebuked (again). 

Picture books are story. Even Flotsam, which is the more abstract of David Wiesner's picture books, wraps back around to the principal character or narrator. There's a problem and climax. 

There is cross-over, of course, as with most mediums, but all artists deserve praise for the thing they do in that medium.