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  • Ways of Seeing Illustration:A Review of Image and Maker
  • Suzanne Rahn (bio)
Harold Darling and Peter Neumeyer , eds. Image and Maker: An Annual Dedicated to the Consideration of Book Illustration. La Jolla, CA: Green Tiger Press, 1984.

True to the odd and persistent logic of its relatively brief history, the Green Tiger Press of La Jolla, California, has produced Image and Maker: An Annual Dedicated to the Consideration of Book Illustration. Harold Darling writes in the Preface that the publishers began as collectors of picture books, whose desire "to share our discoveries" (iv) first took the form of greeting cards and postcards with well reproduced illustrations from nineteenth- and early twentieth-century children's books. From the outset, unusual selections from the work of such lesser-known illustrators as H. J. Ford, Florence Henderson, and Eleanor Boyle accompanied the classic scenes of Beatrix Potter, Edmund Dulac, and Arthur Rackham; it was evident that the Press had an educated eye and a strong personal taste independent of standard critical opinion. Then came more reproductions in the varied forms of bookplates, calendars, stationery, and posters. And then actual books: revivals of long-lost picture books, new picture books, and some tentative forays into the criticism of illustration.1 Image and Maker brings the Press full circle. As edited by Harold Darling and Peter Neumeyer, the volume combines the bibliographical and historical approach of the collector with the aesthetic and analytical approach of the critic, and illustrates both approaches with a wealth of black-and-white and tipped-in color reproductions of the high quality that the Press has been known for all along.

In his Introduction, Peter Neumeyer stresses the deliberately eclectic nature of Image and Maker and offers this convenient summary of its contents:

. . . in this first issue you will find an enlightened "reading" of illustrations; an empathetic discussion of one specific problem confronting artists attempting to render the virtually unimaginable; the personal reminiscences of one distinguished literary woman recalling her friendship with the extraordinary Jessie Willcox Smith; a "revival" of a [End Page 101] historically significant and aesthetically impressive "forgotten book"; and, finally, an informed, yet considerate, tour through the bibliographical antechambers of some great collections, by way of their "Great Catalogs."

(v)

Were these articles all of equal quality (or, at least, equal density of depth and detail), the reader might be more thoroughly convinced of the value of taking a multiplicity of approaches in the study of book illustration. As it is, one is apt to find some approaches far more worthwhile than others.

Perry Nodelman's "How Picture Books Work" is for me the most valuable article in the collection. His general premises —that a picture book is characterized by the dynamic interaction of text and pictures, and that different illustrations produce different interpretations of a text —are certainly not new. What makes the article exciting is Nodelman's perceptive analysis of the degrees of tension between text and pictures in specific books (especially Where the Wild Things Are); and, more especially, his detailed study of two sets of illustrations for "Snow White" —the strikingly different interpretations of Nancy Eckholm Burkert and Trina Schart Hyman. The contrast demonstrated between Burkert's "static quality" and use of isolated dramatic moments on the one hand, and Hyman's "operatic intensity" on the other (12), not only supports Nodelman's assertion that "these two Snow Whites are two quite different stories" (12), but increases one's appreciation of both picture books and raises important questions about the style of illustration most appropriate for fairy tales.

The article first appeared in print in Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Conference of The Children's Literature Association (1981) and was reprinted in The Children's Literature Association's Festschrift: A Ten Year Retrospective (1983).2 Its reappearance in Image and Maker seems justified not only because it deserves hard covers and wider audience, but because it has enabled the author to improve the piece in two ways. Readers of the earlier version will notice that Nodelman has rethought and I think strengthened his conclusion. And the accompaniment of well-reproduced illustrations from the books discussed does much to drive home his arguments...

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