Visual Grammar

Alison Jay has always created a visual story line in her books, and her beachside adventure Out of the Blue follows that established pattern. Her alphabet book (A B C) and counting book (1 2 3) teach youngest children these early concepts, and they also give them a plot line to follow that unfolds entirely through the illustrations. Out of the Blue, with no words, tells a complete story--two children make friends, take shelter from a storm, and rescue a giant octopus. It's liberating for children who are just learning to read because they can make up their own story.

Jay helps youngest children build confidence, as she reinforces all that they know: pages move from left to right, children can point out the heroes in the book who appear repeatedly (the boy and the girl) and they can follow the secondary characters down the beach. They do not need to decode words to "read" the story.

This spring at the Bank Street College of Education, Stephen Savage spoke about “visual grammar” using his book Where’s Walrus? to explain his idea. He spoke of the text and illustrations as “the harmony and melody of the song” and pointed to silent movies as “the original wordless books.” He explained the four components he believes are essential to books without words:

1)  The close-up
2)  Color/contrast
3)  Design/branding
4)  Pattern/repetition

You can see these elements most clearly in Where's Walrus?, but they also come into play in Alison Jay's work.

Children take in everything around them. They are sponges, absorbing how the world works long before they have words to explain what they're seeing. These elements, of which Savage spoke so eloquently, and which Jay also employs in her books, help children unlock the story within the book and also to use those strategies to make sense of the events in their own experiences.

Wordless Books & Visual Literacy

For a child who cannot yet read--who cannot decode letters as symbols that represent sounds--wordless books such as Journey by Aaron Becker give them a way to tell the story they see. 

From Journey by Aaron Becker

Children will notice the only colors that pop in the opening pages of Journey: a boy's purple crayon, and a girl's red one. Like Crockett Johnson's Harold and his purple crayon, the girl uses her red one to create a world. In her case, it leads her out of her alienating sepia-toned cityscape and into a lush world of forests, interconnected waterways and steampunk airships. Eventually, a purple bird leads her back to the boy and his purple crayon. She is no longer alone. 

Stephen Savage's Where's Walrus? is a terrific introduction to wordless books for children. Its direct, implicit puzzle--finding Walrus, who's escaped from New York's Central Park Zoo--allows them to pick the hero from a line-up based on his unique characteristics (flippers, tail, tusks, etc.). The book gets them thinking about patterns, likenesses and differences. Generous white space and bold colors repeated for maximum effect make this an ideal book for giving children the idea of how to "read" a purely visual narrative. 

Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger includes a few words, to describe the bountiful shades of green that she showcases in the book, but the larger narrative goes unstated. A parent-child relationship that centers around a tree, which begins as a sapling and grows to be the anchor of their home, suggests the cycle of life. Her greens go from the concrete and literal ("lime green" / "pea green") to the more abstract ("all green" / "never green"). She uses die-cuts in the pages to train children's eyes on the details she wants to reveal to them. It's an ingenious way to demonstrate ways to inspect artwork carefully and unlock its secrets.

Jerry Pinkney's Caldecott Medal–winning The Lion and the Mouse, with its breathtaking landscapes of the Serengeti teeming with hidden treasures, invites children to pore over the pictures for flowers and creatures, large and small. Pinkney's gorgeous spreads of grandeur composed from the tiniest details echo Aesop's overriding theme of the interconnectedness and interdependence of nature's plants and species. 

Open any one of these books (and hopefully all four) to unlock how much your youngster has to say about what he or she sees.

The Art of Stephen Savage

Stephen Savage

If you look at the artwork for Polar Bear Night by Lauren Thompson, illustrated by Stephen Savage, you might think that it seems fairly simple--geometric shapes, pretty shades of blue, green and lavender, some interesting textures. 

But how does Savage create emotion with these fairly straightforward colors and shapes? The uncomplicated compositions allow young children to see themselves standing in for the polar bear cub. And Stephen Savage's technique is anything but simple. 

We got a chance to interview him about his book The Fathers Are Coming Home by Margaret Wise Brown, and he shared with us the multi-step process he uses every time he makes a print for one of his books. He draws on the linoleum, cuts the linoleum to create a relief print, then carefully builds up the inks on the raised areas to give a sense of depth, perspective and, in the case of Polar Bear Night, a nighttime setting.

He demonstrates his process here. It makes you think about how nothing is ever as easy as it looks.

The AHA Moment

When you are looking at a book with a child who is just starting to grasp the cover of a book in his or her tiny fingers, there is nothing like that “AHA” moment on his or her face. The moment when he or she recognizes the character, or how to turn the page, or skips ahead to see if things will turn out the way he or she thinks it will. That is what happens with Where’s Walrus? by Stephen Savage. There are no words in his book, and babies and toddlers use only their eyes to identify Walrus.

Stephen Savage recently gave a presentation at the Society of Illustrators in New York City, and he talked about how babies pick out Walrus instantly on the cover. After that connection, it makes sense that they would go through each image, searching for Walrus just as the zookeeper searches for his runaway charge. But the author-artist also gives them a hint in the first scene after Walrus’s escape: Walrus is hiding in a fountain across from a mermaid. In this instance, their tails are the same, and also the leafy crowns they wear. Walrus’s tusks differentiate him from the mermaid. In the next scene, the fellow’s tail gives him away. With these first two puzzles, Savage “informs” children that these are the two characteristics that will help them discover Walrus in each image.

In his presentation, Savage talked about the importance of stripping down the images or “essentializing” them. He began with the cover. “Things that are well designed touch the heart and emotion,” he said, “like the Wonder Bread logo. That makes me hungry.” But he also packs in plenty for adult observers, too. The cover is a reference to Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks.” The zookeeper is a nod to Buster Keaton’s silent films. And can you find the Monopoly man in these pages?

This is a book where your baby or toddler may actually beat your older child (and you) to the punch—finding Walrus before anyone else. Their minds are so attuned to visual cues that this book is tailor-made for them, but the entire family will pore over it.