Creation of a Picture Book: The Evolution of Bloopy and the Cloud Creature

Abstract

A picture book, sometimes referred to as a "picture storybook,” tells a story through its text as well as through pictures. In a quality picture book, according to Huck (12) and Cass (2), a child should be able to accurately retell the story from just the pictures after having heard the text and seen the pictures once. Viguers (25) and Nesbitt (22) state that a true picture book is a book in which pictures tell a story with little need of text. Viguers distinguishes between picture books and picture storybooks by defining the latter as books in which “illustrations further interpret the story but do no supplant the text in importance." White (27), Wilson (29), Cass (2), and Freeman (8) agree that text and illustrations should make up a unity. The text does not simply describe the pictures, nor do the pictures merely illustrate the words. Both text and illustration complement one another and extend each other's significance. Beni Montresor (20); in his Caldecott Award Acceptance Speech, stated that “a picture book is a book whose content is expressed through its images. The story told with pictures has a language all its own: the visual language, and therefore it is with this language that a picture book must express itself."