Children's Book Design 3004/Kashka: NOTES FROM LECTURE WEEK 2

“Pictures are the most intelligible

form of learning that a child

can look upon”

John Amos Comenius - 1600’s

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EARLY CHILDREN LITERATURE:

Children's literature emerged as a distinct and independent genre only two centuries ago. Prior to the mid-eighteenth century books were rarely created specifically for children, and children's reading was generally confined to literature intended for their education and moral edification rather than for their amusement. Religious works, grammar books, and "courtesy books" (which offered instruction on proper behavior) were virtually the only early books directed at children, where illustration played a relatively minor role, usually consisting of small woodcut vignettes or engraved frontispieces created by anonymous illustrators.

The stories of Aesop (a Greek storyteller of the sixth century B.C.) were among the most frequently published and illustrated. Aesop's Fables was published in its first English translation by William Caxton (c. 1422–91) in 1484. It soon became one of the most popular illustrated books for children, though in many early editions there was little attempt to adapt the stories to make them easier for children to understand and relate to.

Comenius was Czech educational reformer, and his book was also innovative in its recognition that there are fundamental differences between children and adults.

VISIBLE WORLD 1658

Simple language and pictures taught children Latin. Comenius believed, only when something ha sheen grasped by the senses can language begin to explain it further.

Charles Perrault
He decided to dedicate himself to his children. In 1697 he published Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals (Histoires ou Contes du Temps passé) subtitled Tales of Mother Goose (Les Contes de ma Mère l’Oye) Its publication made him suddenly widely-known beyond his own circles and marked the beginnings of a new literary genre, the fairy tales, with many of the most well-known tales, such as Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood

Tales past on with morals.
During 1700 books for children very still limited, mainly educational books with religious context:

HORNBOOK

“When little children first are brought to schoole A Horne-booke is a necessarie toole.”
— Nicholas Breton, 1612

Some curious facts about hornbooks:

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Hornbooks were made of many materials beside wood, including ivory, silver, leather, bone … and occasionally gingerbread. When students learned a letter, they were allowed to eat it!

Children wore their hornbooks. There was a hole in the handle so they could be attached to boy’s belt or a girl’s girdle.

Because they were fairly indestructible and went everywhere with their owners, hornbooks were often used as bats when children were at play.

English and European hornbooks typically had a cross in the upper lefthand corner. But there were no crosses in New England hornbooks, because the Puritans abhorred the symbol of the cross.

CHAPBOOK:

Philosophers of that time
New attitudes toward children and their education began to develop in the late XVII century, when many educators appealed for greater consideration of children's distinctive needs and when the notion of pleasure in learning was becoming more widely accepted.

John Locke - British Philosopher, Father of Liberalism.
John Locke quote from Some Thoughts Concerning Education in defense of learning through play:

Thus children may be cozened into a knowledge [of] letters; be taught to read without perceiving it to be anything but a sport, and play themselves into that others are whipped for. Children should not have anything like work, or serious, laid on them; neither their minds nor bodies will bear it. It injures their healths; and their being forced and tied down to their books, in an age at enmity with all such restraint, has; I doubt not, been the reason why a great many have hated books and learning all their lives after: it is like a surfeit, that leaves an aversion behind, not to be removed. I have therefore thought, that if playthings were fitted to this purpose, as they are usually to none, contrivances might be made to teach children to read, whilst they thought they were only playing.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau -Rousseau's ideas about education have profoundly influenced modern educational theory:

-he minimizes the importance of book learning, and recommends that a child's emotions should be educated before his reason

-he placed a special emphasis on learning by experience.

"Till a child reaches years of understanding, he does not receive ideas, but only images. Images are merely direct copies of sensible objects; ideas are notions of objects, as determined by their relations(...) They retain sounds, shapes, and sensation (...)".

The writings of Locke and Rousseau were influential to British educators, and their ideas ultimately led to a more humane approach to education: enjoyment was considered an aid to learning.

By the early XVIII century interest in children's literature (and a rise in literacy) led to new markets and an increase of new publishers, particularly in England. Innovations in typography and printing allowed greater freedom in reproducing art through engraving, woodcut, etching, and aquatint, although illustrators were still largely anonymous and illustrations confined to frontispieces.

John Newbery was an important figure of the earlier publishers: publishing vast quantities of children's literature of all types as well as a wide range of books on reading, philosophy, and science, most covered in flowered and gilt Dutch paper and enlivened by simple woodcut illustrations

His first children's book was A Little Pretty Pocket Book (1744),

and one of the most popular was his 1765 History of Little Goody Two Shoes,

regarded as the first novel written specifically for children (it is said to have been written for Newbery by Oliver Goldsmith). Juvenile Library in his bookstore was developed by him with small selection of children's books. He saw the potential and gap in the market for children's books.

He developed shorter versions of books like Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels.

Thomas Bewick - in 1767 at the age of 14, was appointed as a metal engraver, he also cut wood blocks for illustrations and chapbooks. He became famous for creating wood engravings in the volumes of Natural History that he wrote and published himself.

He is an important figure in the development of wood - engraving as a medium for book illustrations

XIX century:

The XIX century witnessed the institutionalization of the idea of childhood as a period distinct from adulthood and as a time to be enjoyed, at least by prosperous middle-class Victorians.

During the latter half of the century many of the classics of children's literature in English appeared, including Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868–69), Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1883), Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book (1894).

This period also saw the emergence of the picture book, in which the illustrations—and the artist's vision—were at least as important as the text. No longer anonymous, artists were aided by technical advances in printing and a growing middle-class market for books.

George Cruikshank was the 1st artist to make his living out of illustrating books. William Thackeray declared Cruikshank's illustrations to be "the first real, kindly, agreeable and infinitely amusing and charming illustrations in a child's book in England."

Cruikshank continued to influence the genre of children's books with his illustrations for Charles Dickens's novels as well as his retellings of favorite tales to emphasize his temperance beliefs, published in the 1850s.

1854, illustration for Jack and the Beanstalk.

In the second half of the XIX century technical and artistic innovations led to the emergence of children's book illustration as a major artistic genre.

Richard Doyle (1824–83) contributed illustrations and political caricatures to the British comic journal Punch in the 1840s and 1850s, later became famous for his pictures of elves and fairies in such elaborate works as William Allingham's In Fairyland (1870):

Like Doyle, John Tenniel (1820–1914) had also worked for Punch but is best known as the illustrator of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass (1872). Alice was one of the landmarks of the XIX century fantasy genre, helping to initiate a tradition of fantastical tales with no obvious moral.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1866

The greatest advances in color printing came with the wood engravings of Edmund Evans and his development of the toy book in the mid-1860s. These thin picture books consisting of eight pages, each printed on only one side, between stiff paper covers, had existed since the beginning of the Victorian era and were published in great numbers by Dean and Son, Routledge, and other firms, but usually without the participation of notable illustrators.

Evans succeeded in engaging such major artists as Randolph Caldecott (1846–86), Walter Crane (1845–1915), and Kate Greenaway (1846–1901), engraving and printing the books himself and working with publishers for distribution.

Walter Crane, toybook 1874

Randolph Caldecott, Hey Diddle Diddle and Baby Bunting 1882

Kate Greenaway, Marigold Garden. [1885]

Evans dominated the industry until his death in 1905, when commercial wood engraving was replaced by photographic reproduction processes.

XX century:

"The Golden Age of IIlustration", a period of years 1880 until shortly WWI

In his century literacy in developed countries and technical advances that have made it possible to produce relatively inexpensive high-quality illustrated books have contributed to tremendous growth in children's publishing. Innovations in book printing in the early years of the century, particularly in the use of photography and four-color processing, led to the development of the deluxe gift book, which expanded upon the rich tradition of Edmund Evans.

Elaborate watercolors by Edmund Dulac (1882–1953) a French artist

Dulac, The Little Mermaid 1911

Kay Nielsen (1886–1957) a Danish Illustrator of Fairy Tales,

The Sultan and Scheherazade, Arabian Nights - Kay Nielsen

and Arthur Rackham (1867–1939) in England

"There is almost nothing that has such a keen sense of fun as a fallen leaf" from Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens: Fallen Leaf, Arthur Rackham.

as well as the paintings of Maxfield Parrish (1870–1966) and N. C. Wyeth (1882–1945) in the United States, became the hallmarks of these books, with illustrations printed on special glossy paper and tipped into the pages.

The works of Rackham, Dulac, and Nielsen varied in style and inspiration.

...

Beatrix Potter's books differed in style from the deluxe gift books, and her small, cozy books—designed so that even very young children could comfortably hold them—instead follow the picture book tradition of Caldecott.

Her Tale of Peter Rabbit was first privately published by the author in 1901.

TODAY's BOOK GENRE for children:

Children's literature today has diversity of genres, with books designed for readers at every stage of development, from infancy to young adulthood. The continued vitality of children's publishing suggests that the illustrated storybook remains unparalleled in its ability to nurture the imagination and to provide both instruction and delight.