Choose one art style that you feel would be appropriate for each of the following books:
Information / Reference title aimed at 9-11 years olds
Baby / Toddler - First Objects Book
Picture book aimed at 3-6 year olds
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INFORMATION / REFERENCE 9-11 yr.old
style: Children at that age cope very well with more text and less images, yet when it comes to portraying information the images are very helpful in order to grasp a concept or an idea and to be understood. Non-complicated visuals are best as children at that age learn basic yet fundamental information so they can develop them in the future. The information should be eye-catching and interesting especially for reluctant readers.
Diagrams would be helpful as well as real imagery for greater understanding would be beneficial.
For example:
World History through ages with pictures. Easy to read.
Another example which is an information / referencing book a s well a s kind of a fiction :
Fantastic books appealing to children of that age or even slightly younger. History told with humour and funny illustrations. Learning that will be never forgotten. Simplicity and comic like style helps children to understand and educate about the history.
I wish those were published when I learned history!
BABY / TODDLER FIRST OBJECT BOOKS
style: very simplistic illustartions appropriate for babies and toddlers in order for them to associate pictures with the world around them. Familiarity, repetitions of words and illustrations helps the to engage. Bright colours are more appealing to them.
Books with flaps, pop-ups, shakers, m
ade of soft, colorful cloth are perfect for toddlers since they’re easy to carry around, flip through and even snuggle with.
Books that babies “touch and feel” are very interactive and help them build vocabulary and language skills.
For example:
those books about animals whose parts of body like fur are made of an actual fabric.
multi sensory books like shaker and teether book are perfect for babies!
Board chunky books are most suitable for toddles and babies which allows them on handling them much better.
I have found few illustartions which would be suitable for toddlers. It is not a book but carpet which hangs in Kidderminster library:
bright colours and simplistic illustrations appealing to young audience as well as 3-6 year olds.
other examples:
I found in a newspaper forms of geometrical shapes; this style would appeal to toddles and babies:
PICTURE BOOK AIMED AT 3-6 YR.OLDS
Narrative and illustartions tend to be inseparable in the world of picture books. Words and pictures always should work together, so they can lead children through the story and explore their imagination. Some books have a few words on each page or non at all, others have several paragraphs.
With regards to artistic style, those books range from cartoonish to more sophisticated styles. I think this is the most variable category, they entertain as well as educate.
Style of those books help for communication with a young child; the story can be talked about and explore their feelings and emotions as well as help widen vocabulary and most of all enjoy spending quality time together.:
In this book for young readers, illustrations tell the story, fill the pages almost overwhelm the narrative; which allows children to engage and develop their imagination also.
I have found interested recent McDonalds tray cover; cut-outs and folklore style, yet simple:
other examples are based on my daughters recent drawings on the computer; realistic, filling the whole page and bright:
I have recently read the above article about books and reading. It seems to be that e-Books are very popular and taking over good paperback/hardback book!
....in my case if I CAN'T FEEL THE PAGES, SMEEL THE INK, HEAR THE NOISE OF MOVING PAPER THE NARRATIVE AND VISUALISATION OF THE STORY WILL NOT WORK. IT IS PERMANENT AND WON'T BE DELETED.
e-Book??.... unreachable and behind the screen piece of writing...and not for my enjoyment.
Reading should be a pleasure to engage with, not a fast track and gadget time....
...but many will feel differently.
When it comes to books for children I don't think that reading a book with on an iPad or iPhone will be ever pleasurable...perhaps for the adult only.
Children time ---- Reading time-----PAPER BOOKS ----- Engagement/Development ----- FUN
To appreciate a book's narrative, its author, illustrator and all hard work that was needed to create it means to actually choose to read it on a paper. Visual senses develop as well as motor skills when children touch, move the pages and move the book around. And what can you do with a screen?? you move it - it moves with you, you drop it - it might break, explore it and bang! the story is erased!
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, whereillustration 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 Fableswas 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.
Comeniuswas 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.
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:
//www.bookmakingwithkids.com/?p=716
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 adulthoodand 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'sAlice's Adventures in Wonderland(1865), Louisa May Alcott'sLittle Women (1868–69), Robert Louis Stevenson'sTreasure Island(1883), Mark Twain'sAdventures of Huckleberry Finn(1884), and Rudyard Kipling'sJungle 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 anda growing middle-class market for books.
George Cruikshankwas 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 Punchbut is best known as the illustrator of Alice's Adventures in Wonderlandand 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 thetoy 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.
