163.full

http://jlr.sagepub.com/Journal of Literacy Research

http://jlr.sagepub.com/content/40/2/163The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1080/10862960802411901

2008 40: 163Journal of Literacy ResearchPeggy Albers

Theorizing Visual Representation in Children's Literature

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

On behalf of:

Literary Research Association

can be found at:Journal of Literacy ResearchAdditional services and information for

http://jlr.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

http://jlr.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:

http://jlr.sagepub.com/content/40/2/163.refs.htmlCitations:

What is This?

- Jun 1, 2008Version of Record >>

by guest on June 18, 2013jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded from

http://jlr.sagepub.com/

http://jlr.sagepub.com/content/40/2/163

http://www.sagepublications.com

http://www.nrconline.org

http://jlr.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts

http://jlr.sagepub.com/subscriptions

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

http://jlr.sagepub.com/content/40/2/163.refs.html

http://jlr.sagepub.com/content/40/2/163.full.pdf

http://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtml


Journal of Literacy Research, 40:163–200, 2008

Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 1086-296X print/1554-8430 online

DOI: 10.1080/10862960802411901

Theorizing Visual Representationin Children’s Literature

Peggy AlbersCollege of Education

Georgia State University

Children’s literature has been analyzed through a number of different theoretical

lenses, including critical literacy, feminism, and multiculturalism. Yet, given the

prominence that image plays in such literature, little if any work in literacy has

analyzed children’s literature from the perspective of art theory. This study first

theorized how and why artists render visual representations as they do. It then used

this theory to analyze images in Caldecott award-winning literature. Three findings

emerged from the analysis: (a) image types cut across time, culture, and artists’

rendering; (b) images embody stable representations of culture; and (c) images

tend to render visual binaries and invite oppositional readings. Implications are

discussed for developing and using a theory for the close reading of visual imagery

in children’s literature.

Resúmen

La literatura infantil se ha analizado a través de diferentes enfoques teóricos, in-

cluyendo el crítico, el feminista y el multicultural. No obstante, dado el importante

papel que juegan las imágenes visuales en dicha literatura, pocos estudios han anal-

izado la literatura infantil desde la perspectiva de la teoría artística. En este estudio

se teoriza primero cómo y por qué los artistas rinden representaciones visuales de

la manera en que lo hacen. Esta teoría se utiliza para analizar las imágenes de

trabajos de literatura infantil reconocidos con el premio Caldecott. El análisis dió

como resultado tres ideas: (a) los tipos de imágenes son congruentes con la época,

cultura y redición del artista; (b) las imágenes incorporan representaciones estables

Correspondence should be addressed to Peggy Albers, Ph.D., Middle and Secondary

Education/Instructional Technology, Language and Literacy, College of Education, Georgia State

University, Atlanta, GA 30303. E-mail: [email protected]

163



164 ALBERS

de cultura; y (c) las imágenes tienden a rendir representaciones visuales binarias

y a invitar al espectador a tomar la posición del artista. En las implicaciones se

discuten el desarrollo y uso de teorías para el análisis de imágenes visuales en la

literatura infantil.

Résumé

La littérature pour enfants a été analysée à travers de nombreuses approches, ainsi

que la critique littéraire, le féminisme, et le multiculturalisme. Cependant, étant

donné la proéminence donnée à l’image dans cette littérature, peu d’oeuvres en

lecture-écriture ont analysé la littérature pour enfants du point de vue de la théorie

artistique. Cette étude a théorisé comment et pourquoi les artistes expriment les

représentations visuelles comme ils le font. Ensuite, cette théorie a été utilisée

pour analyzer des images dans la littérature qui reçoit le prix Caldecott. Trois

conclusions émergent de cette analyse: (a) les types d’images transcendent le

temps, la culture, et l’interprétation de l’artiste; (b) les images incarnent des

représentations culturelles et (c) les images ont tendance à représenter des vues

binaires et invitent à des interprétations opposées. Les implications sont discutées

pour élaborer et utiliser une théorie qui permette une lecture approfondie des

images dans la littérature pour enfants.

Theorizing Visual Representation in Children’s Literature

“Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.”

(J. Berger, 1972, p. 7)

Karol Berger (2000) in A Theory of Art asked this question: “What, if

anything, has art to do with the rest of our lives?” (p. vii). When it comes

to reading children’s literature, especially for young readers who often use



THEORIZING VISUAL REPRESENTATION 165

FIGURE 1 Visual representation of Snow White.

illustration to read story, art has everything to do with the rest of our lives.

Through art and image in children’s literature (and other media forms), children

learn to read characters, events, and action; they build assumptions about the

world and the people in it through this reading (Banks, 1997; Comber, 2001;

Enciso, 1994; Harste, 2003; Lewison, Seeley-Flint, & Van Sluys, 2002; Taxel,

1997). As John Berger (1972) stated in the opening quotation, children often

see their world and begin to recognize patterns before they learn oral and/or

written language. They begin their understanding of the world through looking

and seeing. How they look and see, however, are often situated in the way

children’s literature artists look at and see their world through the images they

render.

Development and presentation of a theory of looking and seeing, primarily

informed by an art perspective, is significant to literacy researchers and edu-

cators for three distinct reasons. First, image, as well as other visual modes,

is fast becoming the source through which many read, experience, and build

beliefs about the world (Albers, 2007; Kist, 2005; Kress, 2003; Kress & Jewitt,

2003; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001). For children as well as adults who are

learning to read the world through image, understanding the visual structures

that exist within images is as important to the shaping of beliefs as is the written

word; as with print-based texts, this understanding must be interrogated (Harste,

2005). Further, since reading is a non-neutral form of cultural practice (Luke

& Freebody, 1999), readers for the 21st century must be able to interrogate

the assumptions that are embedded in visual and linguistic text (Albers, 2003,

2005a, 2005b, 2007; Albers & Murphy, 2000; Heffernan, 2004; Kress, 2003;



166 ALBERS

Lewison et al., 2002; Luke, 1998; Vasquez, 2004), and educators must question

“how and to what ends can we shape students’ reading and writing practices”

(Luke, 1998, p. 306).

Second, an art perspective encourages viewers to respond to the function

and value of art, both as an aesthetic object and as an object created from

social practices (K. Berger, 2000). Maxine Greene (1995) suggested that as

aesthetic objects, works of art “open our eyes, they stir our flesh” (p. 143), and

their purpose is to encourage certain social practices in which viewers notice

the noticeable, become appreciative and reflective, and understand the role of

the arts in making life meaningful. When this happens, new understandings

are made in experience, and new ways of working in the world are opened

(Greene, 2001). J. Berger (1972) suggested that the way we as humans see

objects is affected by what we know or believe; reading images is not about

“mechanically reacting to stimuli” (p. 8) but involves a process of seeing, taking

notice of what we choose to look at and how the canvas is organized. An art

perspective also recognizes the significance of schema in an artist’s construction

and organization of image. Informed by their own life and art experiences,

artists compose qualitative relationships that serve a purpose (Eisner, 2003a,

2003b), and readers learn to read these relationships within the canvas. In other

words, viewers, through immersion and recognition, learn to notice and identify

relationships across visual texts and begin to internalize how these relationships

function and what they come to mean.

Third, an art perspective must be considered in literacy research because art

comprises so much of literacy learning for both younger and older students. The

young depend on image to read language text, especially through picturebooks

(Kiefer, 1994), with “each participant called upon to engage in interchange of

intellect and emotion, and experience that [which] is at once communal and

individual and that transcends time and place” (p. 4). The older student often

depends on image for content information, clarification, confirmation, and/or

symbolic connections (Alvermann & Phelps, 2004). Suzanne Langer (1979)

talked about this mind-language connection. The mind, she stated:

tends to operate with symbols far below the level of speech : : : [and that] the

“sense image” is not a direct copy of actual experience, but has been “projected,”

in the process of copying, into a new dimension, the more or less stable form

we call a picture: : : : They are our own product, yet not part of ourselves as our

physical actions are; rather might we compare them with our uttered words (save

that they remain entirely private), in that they are objects to us, things that may

surprise, even frighten us, experiences that can be contemplated, not merely lived.

(p. 144)

Langer appeared to argue that as viewers read images, pictures are reconsti-

tuted in their minds, sometimes real, but also sometimes contemplated, especially




if experienced only vicariously. The transaction (Rosenblatt, 1995) between what

is viewed, in relation to lived experiences, is both physical and intellectual, and

becomes significant as children learn to read, interpret, and reproduce their

world.

To explore concepts of schema theory in art, relationships, and the mind-

language connection, I have developed and present a theory of looking and

seeing, informed by the discipline of art. As Susanne Langer (1958) argued,

philosophical theory is not meant to irrefutably suggest “proof” about how

viewers learn to read, interpret, and communicate their worlds, but also gives

rise to “insight and discovery” (p. xii) about the “consistency of concepts” and

of putting these concepts into a way of looking at the significance of art as a

generative meaning-making language. The first part of this paper articulates a

theory of looking and seeing in which I describe the nature of codes that exist

in visual representations across time and space. Gombrich (1994) called these

schematic or representational codes, characteristics, or visual tracings. The image

of Snow White positioned at the beginning of this paper, which resembles many

we may have seen in other versions of Snow White, hints at these schematic

codes and suggests that tracings of previous artworks are often reconstituted in

later renditions. In the second part of the paper, I apply this theory to Caldecott

literature because the award is given for artistic achievement and innovation. An

analysis of Caldecott images (or children’s literature) from a theory located in

the discipline of art such as this has yet to be presented in the literacy field and

may lead to insights and discoveries about how and why literacy learners bring

and reproduce particular concepts of culture into classrooms as they do.

A THEORY OF LOOKING AND SEEING

Changes in the conditions surrounding the reading of children’s literature are

such that theories, such as multicultural (Banks, 1997; Enciso, 1994; Fang, Fu, &

Lamme, 1999), reader response (Applebee, 1995; Appleman, 2000; J. A. Langer,

1995; Rosenblatt, 1995), and critical literacy (Comber & Kamler, 1997; Comber

& Simpson, 2001; Giroux, 1988; Janks, 1993; Leland, Harste, Oceipka, Lewison,

& Vasquez, 1999; Lewison et al., 2002; Luke & Freebody, 1999; Macedo,

1994; Shannon, 1993; Street, 1995; Vasquez, 2004), are excellent lenses, but

they cannot completely describe or explain why or how children internalize,

explicitly or implicitly, particular assumptions about the world and the people in

it. Scholars whose work is situated within these theories aptly have constructed

strong arguments in support of a critical perspective when reading texts. Yet,

scholarship must also turn to perspectives that are often unassociated with the

field of literacy, which provide additional insight into how readers make sense of

their worlds. An art perspective offers explanations about the visual world that



168 ALBERS

the aforementioned theories often do not, especially in terms of how artworks

are conceived and represented. The terms that I consider when forwarding this

theory are those I believe literacy researchers ought to look at, especially with

image as a stronghold in today’s world. First, there is the idea of looking and

its associated word seeing. Within this notion are the concepts of imitation

and recognition, as well as pleasure and knowledge building through image.

Further, a new theory of looking and seeing cannot exist without the concept

of transformation, which relates to how readers subsequently can reshape their

perspective on reading images.

LOOKING AND SEEING

John Berger (1972) distinguished between what it means “to look at” and “to

see” the world. To look at an object or person or situation, we glean “information

of a sort” (p. 24). In other words, we look at surface aspects of the image,

physical details, or criterial aspects that are visible to the eye (Kress & van

Leeuwen, 1996). To see is to transact with the text, to make meaning from the

elements that comprise this text. In the world of art, concepts of looking and

seeing are significant.

Looking

To look, J. Berger (1972) wrote, “is an act of choice” (p. 8). Artists choose the

criterial aspects, or details, they want to include in their artworks. Such images

allow for abstraction of concepts, and are “our spontaneous embodiments of

general ideas” (S. Langer, 1979, p. 145). These aspects provide information that

enables a reader to recognize or learn to recognize a person, race, concept, and

so on, and build general ideas about them. To illustrate the concept of looking, I

present four examples of paintings by artists across a century, and identify several

of the many physical details that are evident in these artworks. Charles Russell

(1864–1926), a native of Missouri, grew up in Montana yet found fame in New

York as a painter of scenes of the West, including Native Americans. In Figure 2,

entitled The Scout (Russell, 1907), a reader looks at details in this composition,

including the title, and immediately recognizes this as a depiction of a Native

American. A warrior, wearing a feathered headdress, sits atop a pinto horse.

With spear in hand, the warrior looks off into the distance in contemplation.

The time appears midday with the sun overhead, casting a downward shadow

of the warrior on the ground. The warrior is painted in the middle of a grassy

plain of sorts.

Two years later in 1909, the year of his death, Frederick Remington, born

in 1861, also painted his perception of Native Americans in The Outlier (Rem-




FIGURE 2 Charles Russell, The Scout, 1907.

ington, 1909; see Figure 3). Like Russell, Remington had a reverence for the

West and traveled throughout North Dakota, Montana, West Canada, and the

Southwest and was known as a historically accurate painter of western scenes.

Yet, Remington lived nearly all of his life in the East, where he was born. He

traveled west to do sketches, take photos, and collect props for his studio. In

Figure 3, The Outlier, Remington painted specific physical details that enable

a reader to immediately recognize this as a Native American. In this image, a

male Native American, in a simple feather headband, is dressed only in leather

pants and sits atop a horse somewhere on a hilly plain, rough with gorse-like

vegetation. With the sun setting at his back, this warrior looks to the East.

Visual information in The Outlier is organized in a similar way to The Scout in

a number of ways: single warrior sits atop a horse, isolated on a vast plain, with

eyes locked into a particular direction, both males with weapons in hand. From

the texts consulted, it is difficult to know if Remington or Russell ever met.

Contemporary illustrations of Native Americans by Peter Parnall in The

Desert Is Theirs (Baylor, 1987), nearly 80 years later, contained details similar

to Remington’s and Russell’s works. Nature and clothing immediately make

these illustrations recognizably Native American. Parnall illustrated Byrd Bay-

lor’s fictional characters with single headbands that literally emerge as nature

and from nature. All introspectively look away from each other and, thus, are

positioned in isolation from each other.

Figure 4 is a contemporary painting done by Native American artist Dana

Tiger that is organized with details or information of a sort that resemble those



170 ALBERS

FIGURE 3 Frederick Remington, The Outlier, 1909.

FIGURE 4 Dana Tiger, Quest for Peace, contemporary.




of Russell, Remington, and Parnall (Tiger, n.d.). Like her predecessors’, Tiger’s

warrior is on a painted pony, and like Russell and Remington, the warrior

is dressed in headdress or headband and holds a weapon. Like Russell’s and

Remington’s, the figure is isolated on a vast plain. Like Parnall, Tiger used

strong, curved lines that indicate close connection to nature and all that is organic

(Bang, 2000). And, like all three, the warrior looks beyond the viewer and toward

some direction.

When readers look at images such as those artistically rendered by Russell,

Remington, Parnall, and Tiger, they see information of sorts, or elements within

the visual text (e.g., color, shape, placement of objects, line), and immediate

recognition happens. Across time and image, Native American characteristics

are visually coded, decoded by other artists, and then encoded and reinterpreted

in future visual representations.

Seeing

Related to looking is the concept of seeing, which for J. Berger (1972) constitutes

a meaning, or interpretation, made by the reader through viewing an object,

event, thing, photo, and so forth. Susanne Langer (1979) defined seeing as an

active process of formulation, in which “understanding of the visible world

begins in the eyes” (p. 84). In other words, an artist reads earlier visual texts,

transacts with distinct aspects of those texts, and makes sense of who—in this

case Native Americans—are in their eyes. Langer explained this transaction:

Every process we perceive, if it is to be retained in memory, must record itself

as a fantasy, an envisagement, by virtue of which it called up in imagination or

recognized when it occurs again. For no actual process happens twice: only we

may meet the same sort of occasion again. (p. 146)

Over a span of 100 years, these four artists perceived Native Americans

in similar ways and in similar situations. Artists, like writers, draw from the

work of previous artists, and all four of these artists, one Native American,

drew from the codes visually produced by artists of the past. They reproduced

these codes in their own artworks, and, over time, these codes determine how

Native American representation will be made recognizable. In essence, certain

codes of representation, or criterial aspects, appear time and time again; these

codes build a reader’s knowledge about the world. Langer (1979) wrote, “Every

symbol has to do metaphorical as well as literal duty. The result is a dreamlike,

shifting picture, a faery ‘world’” (p. 148). The overall tone of these paintings

is ethereal, complacent, and peaceful, a romantic and common perception of

Native Americans. Yet, Native Americans, like Russell Means, a contemporary

activist, continue to express the historical and on-going struggle with the U.S.



172 ALBERS

government with regard to broken promises, land ownership, and the right to

religious freedom (Jones, 2005).

Schematic or Representational Codes: Looking and

Seeing Rendered Visibly Recognizable

Knowledge of our world is never given to us, argued Karol Berger (2000), and

an artist (and others) must find it out for herself or himself. This knowledge

must be stored through some sort of medium “to preserve” an experience. This

requires the ability of artists to compare what they presently see with what they

have seen in the past. They begin to look at details and represent images based

upon information they have learned previously. In other words, artists such as

Parnall and Tiger visually organize a way for looking at and seeing their world,

based upon earlier work by artists who interpreted Native American life like

Remington and Russell. Berger described the work of artists when they look at

and see the world:

[Seeing] requires the ability to objectify these previous experiences in some way

and to store them in memory, so that we may recall them in imagination when

necessary. To be able to objectify our experience, to stop its flow so as to consider

its contents at leisure, we need a medium of some sort, that is, a material (one

that can actually be perceived and hence also imagined) in which an imprint

of an experience can be preserved, and a representational code which allows us

to translate an immediate experience into this mediated imprint and the reverse,

retranslate the imprint into an experience. (p. 16)

Artists, then, according to Berger, look at images and/or experiences, and

objectify them—stop their flow—to preserve them or lock them in their memory.

With art as their medium, they unlock their memories, retranslate what they

have looked at, and recapture details they remember from previous images or

experiences and re-present them visually. They develop what both Gombrich

(1994) and K. Berger (2000) called a schema for particular images, or a way in

which information is organized and interpreted. In other words, artists develop

representational codes, or schematic codes—details that nearly always appear in

artworks that have a similar theme or composition. These recurring details in

artworks allow readers to recognize the composition more immediately and then

to make their meaning from these visual texts. Gombrich (1994) wrote that the

“artist learns from his masters how to represent a mountain or a tree” (p. 16). He

continued, “Whatever can be coded in symbols can also be retrieved and recalled

with relative ease” (p. 16). Thus, by learning these codes, artists can represent

image schematically and in a way that readers of the image will recognize. If

the relationship among parts of an image is troubling, an artist can research this




image, “enter it onto [her or his] schema and [she or he] is safe” (p. 17). These

“memory images” (p. 16) are stored in the artist’s mind, internalized, and then

retranslated onto the page. If we return to the Native American compositions,

readers of such images cannot help but notice the coded symbols, the criterial

aspects, that cut across images and will recall similar codes to interpret (as noted

earlier) a “dreamlike, a faery ‘world’” (S. Langer, 1979, p. 148) identified as

Native American culture.

A second example across 800 years in artists’ representations of the Madonna

with Child and the Madonna further explains the retranslation of codes (Fig-

ure 5).

When a viewer looks across images, particular “information of a sort” is

noticeable. In the first two images, the Madonna, always placed on the left

side of the child, looks and/or smiles lovingly down at her child held closely,

who may or may not be swathed in a blanket. In the contemporary (Brazilian)

image, one notices that the Madonna, like the other two, looks down demurely.

In each of the images, light is an important element, whether it radiates around

the two figures (as in the first two figures) or is represented by the skylight

in the Brazilian image. This light, in western Christianity, represents a figure’s

holiness. There are many other details within each of these paintings that could

be identified; however, my point is that there are details within these particular

compositions that cut across time and culture. When a viewer sees these images

collectively, what interpretation or sense can be gleaned from them? Whereas

interpretation depends in part on the purpose of the reading (i.e., that of an art

historian, a Christian, a priest, etc.), the relationship between religion and art is

evident.

FIGURE 5 Madonna images across time.



174 ALBERS

This examination of Native American and Madonna compositions attempts

to illustrate what K. Berger (2000) and Gombrich (1994) called artists’ devel-

opment of “memory images” and “representational codes.” Gombrich noted,

“What we ‘see’ is not simply given, but is the product of past experience

and future expectations” (p. 28). To look at and see art implies that readers,

including artists, learn to read and recognize the language of art because it

“is not our mother-tongue” (Winterson, 1995, p. 4). Artists are taught to read

this language, represent images through schematic codes, and readers, then,

are taught subsequently by artists, to read the codes within the language of art.

Even though schematic codes are interpreted and retranslated in slightly different

ways by different artists and readers, Gombrich argued, “the way we ‘see’ the

world leaves recognition unaffected” (p. 29). He continued, “It is not likely

that anybody ever remembers reality in precisely that way, but images of this

schematic kind admirably serve as codes that are aids in memorizing” (p. 16).

These established and recognizable codes allow readers of art across ages and

cultures to read and remember these codes to build their own memory images

(K. Berger, 2000). These images become part of a reader’s repertoire, and when

images become recognizable through time and medium, a reader can find much

pleasure (Gombrich, 1994).

Looking at Imitation and Recognition:

Understanding Pleasure in Seeing

Aristotle suggested that pleasure comes from imitation and a sense of recogni-

tion; humans enjoy seeing likenesses (Gombrich, 1994). Gombrich noted, “The

reason why we enjoy seeing likenesses is that, as we look, we learn and infer

what each is; for example, that is a so-and-so” (p. 12). Readers of art find

pleasure in the recognition of the familiar, an imitation of life so to speak.

Pleasure, in this case, is a result of desire, a cognitive event in which an object or

activity associated with it provides pleasure or relief from discomfort (Kavanagh,

Andrade, & May, 2005). Desire is a conscious act and is experienced through

direct engagement. If a person really enjoys an image of drinking hot cocoa

on a cold night, she or he has “pleasurable piquancy” (p. 446). That is, the

memory image has strong emotive power and may trigger action. When artists

and readers encounter a visual image they recognize and/or triggers pleasure,

they are likely to consciously and powerfully respond to this image, evoking

desire. Such desire warrants encounters with these images time and time again,

and over time, memory images are established. For example, this painting done

by contemporary Atlanta artist David Robinson (n.d.) (Figure 6) may evoke

pleasure and desire for several reasons: (a) readers recognize this as a portrait

of Vincent Van Gogh; (b) readers perhaps evoke a pleasurable memory of their

own experiences with Van Gogh’s work; and (c) art critics have suggested the




FIGURE 6 David Robinson, portrait of Van Gogh.

brilliance of Van Gogh’s painting. Readers find pleasure in this recognition; this

evokes a desire or pleasurable piquancy and serves to place such images in their

memories.

Recognition, argued Gombrich (1994), is “clearly an act of remembering”

(p. 12). He distinguished remembering from recall as it relates to memory.

Recall is the ability to remember details (e.g., we recall a dog has a tail which

is always behind the back of the animal). However, remembering is more holistic

in nature. That is, if an artist does not recall concrete details of an object, she

or he may create codes within an artwork so that the image is recognizable,

even though aspects of the artwork are less representational. For example, after

looking at George Rodrigue’s (2000) Dreaming of You (Figure 7), most readers

will recognize his visual rendering as a dog and find pleasure in this recognition;

however, they will not remember ever seeing a blue dog in real life. Rodrigue

has remembered it differently, but the reader’s ability to recognize this image

speaks to his or her “plasticity of visual experience” (p. 28). That is, “‘seeing’ is

not simply a given, but is the product of past experience and future expectations”

(Gombrich, 1994, p. 28). Even though the artist may alter reality, and create a

“dreamlike, faery world” (S. Langer, 1979), reality is still evident. The artist

finds pleasure and comfort rendering the familiar knowing that the reader will

find pleasure in this imitation.

With the act of recognition comes the ease with which artists see their world.

That is, recognition is largely unconscious and automatic (Gombrich, 1994).

Though various artists represent the Madonna differently (with regard to angle,

light, color, medium, etc.) or choose to retranslate their interpretation of Van



176 ALBERS

FIGURE 7 George Rodrigue, Dreaming of You, 2000.

Gogh’s self-portrait or a dog, the impression of familiarity is not necessarily

affected. Unconsciously, then, or consciously, many artists retranslate the same

qualities of an object, person, event, place, and so forth, into their own artworks.

Desiring recognition and pleasure from the reader, artists, in essence, “teach [the

reader] to see” (p. 27) aspects of an object, person, animal, or event that they

find pleasurable. Retranslating these aspects within images becomes part of how

readers build knowledge about the world.

Looking and Seeing: Building Knowledge about the World

Looking and seeing are always in relationship to something or someone. J.

Berger (1972) wrote:

We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between

things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, contin-

ually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as

we are. (p. 9)

Kristeva (as cited in Moi, 1986) and Freedman (1987) called this relationship

among and between texts “intertextuality” and “intergraphicality,” respectively.

Every text, visual, linguistic, and so on, is always viewed in relation to other

texts and has the generative nature to alter one’s own position, as one cognitively

connects and “build[s] a network of imagery and meaning” (Freedman, 1987,

p. 162).

This network of imagery takes on importance when viewed in the context of

attention. In the field of art, and in seeing in general, the artist focuses on, or

attends to, some things within his or her field of vision, but never everything.

Attention, then, takes place against a backdrop of inattention (Gombrich, 1994).




FIGURE 8 Chris Van Allsburg, The Polar Express, 1985.

The essence of attention is selective. How the artist chooses the focus of an

illustration plays a large part in the way she or he looks at and represents an

image. For example, Van Allsburg (1985), in The Polar Express (Figure 8),

immediately directs the reader’s eye to the boy holding a small red and white

striped rectangular box. He paints both fictional characters looking toward the

box, and readers, like the young girl, are encouraged to lean into the image,

and vicariously experience and see what they see. Readers’ first attention is

toward the box, and the young girl leaning into her brother, who looks down.

This directional gaze is placed against a backdrop of inattention. Readers may

not notice, for example, the repeated red and white striped pattern and color on

the sofa, the window, the white dotted green curtains, and lamp. By directing

attention in this way, the artist reduces the number of places on the visual text to

which a reader initially may look to make sense of the image. Therefore, readers’

interest and attention, and thus how they build knowledge about the world, may

depend on how the artist renders attention to details in the visual text. An artist’s

way of looking and seeing the world teaches a reader to look and see the world

in similar ways. This becomes a socio-political act of representation.

Politicizing Looking and Seeing: How Representation IsVisually Manifested

When art is viewed from the perspective of the artist, the artwork necessarily

becomes political—a manifestation of the experiences and education of the



178 ALBERS

artist. Using memory images based within representational codes generated

by European master artists is problematic for artists of color, as bell hooks

argued (1995). She noted that important Black artists like Lois Mailou Jones

and Romane Bearden assimilated “prevailing norms of their day : : : [in order

to] gain acceptance and recognition” (p. 5). Bearden found little support among

his own people and had to portray race visually at its best rather than how it

was (hooks, 1995). Bearden’s (1977) image of Mother and Child (Figure 9)

is a good example of hooks’s analysis. If a reader looks closely, the mother

and child contain codes also seen in the images in Figure 6, Madonna with

Child. The mother, holding the unclothed child, looks down at the child. Like

Lima’s modern image, sky blue is the color backdrop for the mother, suggesting

hope, light, and spirituality. Furthermore, the geometric juxtaposition of blue

inside green is harmonious, and “experience teaches that certain combinations

of different colors are pleasing, others displeasing or indifferent : : : [P]leasing

[colors] have some regular relationship” (Ostwald, cited in Itten, 1961, p. 23).

Representation of African Americans, for hooks (1995), becomes one of looking

closely at how African Americans are shown through image, as “representation

is a crucial location of struggle for any exploited and oppressed people” (p. 3).

FIGURE 9 Romane Bearden, Mother and Child, 1977.




The reading of image becomes, then, a political act of seeing and looking based

upon the experiences and beliefs of the art-makers and readers of their images.

SUMMARY

In a theory of looking and seeing, therefore, artists draw upon previous artworks

to retranslate their own interpretations of experience. They develop memory

images and reproduce representation or schematic codes in their own artworks

that enable readers to recognize and build knowledge about the world. Such

recognition evokes pleasure and a desire to see similar images in future com-

positions. Through technique, artists direct readers’ attention toward particular

details of the canvas. Thus, artists teach readers to look at and see the world as

they do. The next section applies this theory to images rendered by Caldecott

artists.

‘‘LIFE IMITATES ART FAR MORE THAN ART IMITATESLIFE’’: LOOKING AT AND SEEING CALDECOTT

LITERATURE: CRITICAL VISUAL ANALYSIS OF IMAGE

Oscar Wilde once said, “Paradoxically though it may seem, it is nonetheless true

that life imitates art far more than art imitates life” (http://www.famousquotes.

com/show.php?_id=1000433). If this statement holds some truth, art is more

influential in the development of readers’ understandings and perceptions about

the world than is currently considered. In the field of children’s literature, the

artwork of picture books greatly influences how children begin to perceive,

read, and reinterpret their worlds through art (Taxel, 1997). With this concept

in mind, I apply this theory of looking and seeing to Caldecott award-winning

illustrators and literature, appropriate because the Randolph J. Caldecott Award

is given yearly to an illustrator of the “most distinguished American Picture

Book for Children” for artistic technique and visual delineation of story through

their pictures (http://www.ils.unc.edu/award/chome.html).

My study of Caldecott literature has been long standing (Albers, 1996, 1999,

2000, 2003, 2005a, 2005b). I have examined and continue to examine Caldecott

literature, past and present, for markers that identify characters and cultures. In

this study, I worked with the same belief as Kress and van Leeuwen (1996)

that images, including illustrations in picture books, are “structured messages,

amenable to constituent analysis” (p. 22).

Visual analyses and methodologies are less known in literacy research and

theory than are other types of textual analysis; and, as Alexander (1994) ar-

gued, researchers must pay attention to deeper structural messages that can be



180 ALBERS

interpreted from various visual data points. Informed by the various disciplines

of anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, art, and others, I drew from four

concepts and methods described within visual analyses and methodologies to

analyze Caldecott images. First, images often are arranged in frames, contexts

in which the artist shows the viewer what she or he wants us to see, and

aspects of objects (and people) are included to help the reader understand,

or decode, particular codes within images. Frames often set images in binary

opposition, and viewers look at and see relationships between such binaries as

man-woman, light-dark, top-bottom, left-right, with one aspect carrying more

importance than another. Second, each mark on a page or canvas, including

color choices, or criterial aspects, visibly identifies an artist’s intentions and

interests and is located on various parts of the canvas (upper-lower, left-right,

effective center of attention) depending on its importance to an artist (Bang,

2000; Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996). Studying the location of the criterial aspects

that make up images can offer insight into areas of the canvas that artists

want viewers to look at. Artists paint, draw, sculpt (and so on) aspects that

they find interesting or compelling. These marks have qualitative relationships

within the composition (Eisner, 2002), “fit together to make a larger whole”

(Sonesson, 2004, p. 49), and help viewers see the artist’s intention. Third,

each illustration is comprised of pictures, and each picture is a sign made up

of smaller signs (Sonesson, 1988, 2004). As in written language, individual

signs are meaningless before they are made to form wholes; but, unlike written

language, the meaning of the whole is redistributed back to the parts (Sonesson,

2004). This makes the perception of pictures twofold: Viewers are able to look at

and interpret a picture’s signs both because of their familiarity with its signs and

their culture’s imposed interpretation. And finally, a picture not only represents

a fictive scene, but “[i]t also organizes the space around itself” (Sonesson,

2004, p. 15). Pictures physically and interpretatively identify the artist’s view

and, thus, position viewers to read—to look at and see—from this position.

Such positioning presents a paradox: The artist, in his or her art-making, looks

at where the viewer should be, and inscribes the picture in such a way that

“depict[s] us” (p. 17), the viewer. Thus, the viewer is not alone in interpreting

a visual text; the artist positions the viewer to read this text in a particular way.

More specifically, in this analysis, I focused on 100 Caldecott books from

1938 to 2006 whose main characters were human. The selection was purpo-

sive and convenient in that I studied the texts that are a part of my own

library, supplemented by those I could find in my local library. Guided by

the four concepts described above, I specifically examined Caldecott images

for the following: (a) criterial aspects artists rendered visible in images; (b)

qualitative relationships among the signs within compositions within books,

including the framing of these signs; (c) the orientation of the image and

where objects are placed in images; and (d) the viewer’s position when reading




images. To do so, I holistically read and reread each of the Caldecott books

at least three times, with particular attention to how illustrators presented and

organized visual information. Based upon earlier studies (Albers, 1996; Engel,

1981; Holden Dougherty & Engel, 1987; Hurley, 1998), I organized the books

into broad cultural categories (Native American, Asian, European American,

African American, Jewish, African, and Latino). I understand problems in cat-

egorizing race/ethnicity in simple terms; however, as children read they may

not be able to “perceive distinctions” or recognize cultural nuances (Macedo &

Bartolomé, 1999, p. 6). I initially began holistically coding the artworks within

these broad categories and comparing them across books for aspects that Kress

and van Leeuwen (1996) used when they studied visual images: directionality,

intention, interest, canvas areas size and volume of objects, and composition,

and those that Bang (2000) identified: use of color, line, perspective, and shapes.

Analysis was recursive, as I moved back and forth, between, and among the

books to better understand if and how illustrators drew from similar codes of

representation.

LOOKING OVER TIME AT VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS

OF CALDECOTT WINNERS

Several significant findings emerged from this analysis: (a) Representational

codes cut across time, culture, and artists’ rendering; (b) Visual stability of

culture emerged in schematic codes; and (c) Schematic codes rendered visual

binaries and encouraged oppositional readings.

Representational Codes Cut Across Time, Culture, andArtists’ Rendering

Representational codes cut across time, culture, and artists’ rendering in Calde-

cott award-winning stories. For example, Snow White, representative of fairy

tales that won Caldecott awards, is reimagined in similar ways over 80 years by

three illustrators: Peter Newell (1907; see Figure 10), Michael Foreman (1978),

and Trina Schart Hyman (1974). In Peter Newell’s death scene in Snow White,

illustrated in 1907, viewers see Snow White lying in bed with the dwarves

surrounding her holding candles. In two future visual renderings by Schart

Hyman (1974) and Foreman (1978, p. 77) the framing is similar: Viewers see

dwarves holding candles crowded around a sleeping Snow White. The dwarves

have similar physical features, similar facial expressions, and clothing. Their

eyes are locked onto Snow White, and the illustrators direct readers’ attention

to Snow White in quiet repose. Viewers see what the dwarves see, and with



182 ALBERS

FIGURE 10 Peter Newell, Snow White and Rose Red, 1907.

the dark background and use of candlelight, they also feel the dwarves’ sadness

and anxiety. The illustrators’ use of soft warm light directed at Snow White

highlights her beauty, and the whiteness of her features suggests the purity of

her character (Bang, 2000). Snow White, with her black hair, restful and frail

pose, and wrapped in a patterned quilt, is a comfortable and recognizable image.

Drawing upon a similar sense of hue, or use of color, all three illustrators create

a scene that is nonthreatening, even in the imminent threat of death. Such use

of light creates a mood or atmosphere (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996), in essence

allowing readers and viewers to empathize with the characters’ feelings and

see a peaceful rather than tragic scene. All three illustrators also position the

viewer to look at and see Snow White through the artists’ use of directionality—

or where the dwarves look on the canvas. In all three pictures, the dwarves

collectively look at Snow White to the right or center. This directionality creates

the effective center of attention, or where an artist wants viewers to look first.

In Newell’s and Foreman’s pictures, viewers are positioned by the artist as if




viewers were part of the scene, on the right side of the bed, but far enough away

that viewers cannot participate. In Schart Hyman’s picture, viewers rise above

the scene and look down into a scene in which they cannot participate, almost

as if it was a “faery world” (Langer, 1958). Even though the dwarves comprise

the largest volume and weight of the picture (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996),

viewers are inscribed to look at Snow White in repose and near death. Further,

illustrators’ use of a dark background with light offers yet another directional

perspective and positions readers to attend to Snow White through candlelight

and chiaroscuro.

In all three renditions, illustrators have drawn upon schematic codes of earlier

representations to depict their own. Peter Newell’s 1907 version looks very

similar to Schart Hyman’s almost 70 years later; and Foreman’s, four years after

that, looks similar to both of his predecessors’ renditions. Over time, readers

build knowledge about how this beautiful woman lives and works in her fictional

world. With such similar renditions, stories with females in need of help and

support become reified in visual and detailed ways. These images often become

normal, natural, and recognizable; this recognition may bring pleasure to the

reader (Gombrich, 1994). Fairy tales are meant to teach morals or lessons, and

the artists position viewers as passively and vicariously participating, learning

lessons through the characters’ mistakes or brave actions, and enjoying this

transaction.

Another fairy tale common in children’s literature, Rapunzel, draws in similar

ways upon the styles and images of previous artists. Zelinsky (1997) has drawn

upon specific artists and techniques of Italian Renaissance artists (Figure 11) to

FIGURE 11 Zelinsky’s use of schematic code.



184 ALBERS

render his interpretation of Rapunzel. On the Children’s Book Council Web site

(http://www.cbcbooks.org/html/pozelinsky.html), Zelinsky described the process

through which he both researched and painted the images for this book:

So in setting out to make a picture book of, say, “Rapunzel,” I had to be a

storyteller of today. I could have set the tale in any time or place, historical

or wildly fantastical. But I chose to make the settings about as real as possible,

though not in the reality of today; rather, in Italy, in 1500, when people’s clothes

looked so wonderful, and there really were princes: : : : So I felt that providing the

reader with a sense of a solid, historical world would heighten the experience of

seeing, for instance, a tower with 50 feet of red-gold hair hanging from it.

Zelinsky credited his rendition of this tale to three Renaissance artists and

their work (Peck & Hendershot, 1999). In addition to Rembrandt’s “The Jewish

Bride,” most notable are Zelinsky’s renditions of Rembrandt’s “Agatha Bas,”

Masaccio’s “The Expulsion from Paradise,” and Raphael’s “Madonna and Child

with the Young St. John” (Peck & Hendershot, 1999). Zelinsky’s illustrations

clearly frame his characters in reference to this time period and earlier painters,

his use of light and dark, and physical details. When viewers look at and

see Rembrandt’s painting “The Jewish Bride” for example, (Figure 11), they

clearly identify codes or details that Zelinsky retranslated from this work: the

location of the husband and wife, the introspective looks on the couple’s faces,

the placement of husband’s hands on his wife’s abdomen, the color palette,

and so on. Spaeth (2005) describes Zelinsky’s work as capturing the essence

of the time period, especially drawing from Italian Renaissance. She further

explained that he duplicated colors and borrowed poses often seen in famous

artworks, These influences are clear both in composition, rendering, and use

of light and color. Codes of representation, when placed side-by-side, become

apparent and visible but often elude readers and viewers when texts are read

individually.

In addition, the orientation of the composition reads left to right and top to

bottom, with the real or given information positioned on the left and top, and the

ideal or imagined information on the right and bottom (Kress & van Leeuwen,

1996). The given or real, and the first image read in both works of art relates to

the significance of the male in relation to the female. Both males look down and

toward the right side of the canvas toward the females. The directionality of their

gaze suggests a look to the future with the unborn child and the significance of

the continuance of family heritage. Both females look down and toward the left

side of the canvas, complacent with the present. Their hands are placed atop

their husbands’ hands, reifying their husbands’ positions as heads of households

in charge of present and future decisions.

Representations by Caldecott award-winning illustrators, aside from fairy-

tales, also can be traced to artists of the past. The Yiddish tales (Figure 12),




FIGURE 12 Visual representation of Jewish culture in folktales.

Could Anything Be Worse? (Hirsh, 1974) and It Could Always Be Worse: A

Yiddish Folk Tale (Zemach, 1977), both visually frame scenes of chaos in similar

ways, with the male frustrated by the chaos caused by animals, females, and

children. Like illustrators of fairy tales, Hirsh’s and Zemach’s use of schematic

codes allows the viewer to look at details and immediately recognize a Yiddish

tale: the clothing, facial features, the environment, and, for Zemach, in the title.

Zemach’s use of white space around the male creates a circular pattern. This

directionality leads the viewer’s eye in a semi-circular pattern from top left

to top right (or vice versa), with the causes of the chaos as the path toward

the man’s frustration. Further, Zemach positioned the viewer at the bottom and

lower than the action, looking at and up toward the man in sympathy but away

from the chaos. Hirsh positioned viewers slightly above the chaos and directs

attention toward the male and female, both of whom comprise the effective

center of attention. How a viewer looks at the action is situated in how the

male and female look. The male’s eyes are turned away from the viewer toward

the chaos, and viewers see in his face the fear and submission he experiences.

Immediately to the left of the male is the female who looks downward and

shoos away the animals; both the women and the animals are partly the cause

of the chaos. Viewers sympathize with the male; his eyes are turned away from

the viewer and viewers see that he is not the cause but the victim of the chaos.

He is innocent, much like the baby he clutches in safety to his chest, and

coded much like the Madonna and Child shown earlier. The picture reads left

to right with the chaos as part of the given information and the male’s gaze

toward the right as an appeal to a less confusing home situation. Further, color

encourages viewers to notice the male clothed in a white shirt on a yellow chair;

these colors contrast against the other dark colors. In both images, the cause of

the chaos—females, children, and animals—has volume and mass, taking up



186 ALBERS

nearly the entire canvas. Yet, in so illustrating, Hirsh and Zemach directed the

focus of attention on the man—the smallest character—using physical position

and/or gaze.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, Trina Schart Hyman (Kimmel, 1989; see

Figure 13) and Simms Taback (1999) (http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/

BookDisplay/0„9780670878550,00.html#) rendered their versions of two Jewish

tales. Again, though the media are different, clear codes of dress, facial hair,

and body positions make these images immediately recognizable. The males are

central in both stories, and both must overcome challenging life experiences.

Both Hershel and Joseph are coded as poor, with patches on Joseph’s coat

and Hershel’s coat clearly worn. Both illustrators position viewers directly in

front of the situation, maximizing viewers’ sympathy toward the characters and

optimizing their vicarious participation in the story. Like in Hirsh’s and Zemach’s

works, Taback used circular pattern of imagery, with the animals and flowers—

almost chaotic in placement—living amongst and surrounding Joseph, in the

center. The menorah literally, and figuratively, grounds Schart Hyman’s character

in the present or real situation, one of fear and terror, whereas the sole light at

the top, or the ideal, is the light that when lit at the appropriate time, will save

the village from the goblins.

As Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) articulated, interests of the artist drive

details that are rendered in image. What aspects of Jewish experience do Hirsh,

Zemach, Taback, and Schart Hyman want to portray? How do they want viewers

to look at and see Jewish life? For Hirsh and Zemach, families are poor and

live with farm animals, with the women and children the cause of family chaos

and males terrorized or in fear of this chaos. Like Hirsh and Zemach, Taback’s

FIGURE 13 Schart Hyman, Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins, 1989.




Joseph lives with animals and in poverty, putting to use literally every scrap

of material he owns. Hershel, like his fictional relatives, lives in a poor village

terrorized by the goblins who reside there. Constructing Jewish culture in this

way cultivates particular attention to a relationship among poverty, chaos, and

tension.

Although these stories are considered folk tales, children may not look at or

see these stories as fictional. Rather, they may begin to build a knowledge

base about Jewish experience through the visual codes rendered by artists.

Such visual constructs, especially for young children, become “information of

a sort,” and over time, viewers begin to look at and see these images, recognize

them, and find a sort of pleasure through this recognition: “Oh, that’s a Jewish

family” or that’s a “so-and-so” (Gombrich, 1994). Such images become socially

acceptable, and the poor, and Jewish poor, in particular, become schematic and

recognizably stable caricatures (hooks, 1995). For Jewish readers, in particular,

such visual compositions may be troubling, even when rendered by Jewish

artists. After reading a number of stories, set across time and with similar details,

readers/viewers may see or actively process an understanding of the visible

world of such cultures (S. Langer, 1979). These visual renderings can become

recognizably stable, both for the artist and the reader/viewer, and retranslated

for pleasurable piquancy of future readers.

VISUAL STABILITY OF CULTURE EMERGESIN SCHEMATIC CODES

Across the decades and centuries, in image and in word, members of various

cultures are represented in stable and often predictable ways. In essence, they

are “locked into” a particular set of details and assumptions established by artists

years earlier. Within such renderings, characteristics of cultures and its members

remain relatively stable, with few codes that represent present-day perceptions

of culture. Contemporarily rendered Caldecott characters, like the grandfather

in Say’s Grandfather’s Journey (1993), exist, look, and behave as their fictional

ancestors in Mei Li (Handforth, 1938), Crow Boy (Yashima, 1955), Funny Little

Woman (Mosel, 1972), or The Boy of the Three Year Nap (Snyder, 1988). Across

50 years of illustrations (Figure 14), Asian “information of a sort” is visibly

defined by artists of the past. Characters are schematically dressed in traditional

clothing coded through kimonos and sashes, often learning through elders who

teach specific moral lessons. The visual codes identify Asian culture clearly and

with little variation.

Stable and traditional codes exist across stories and illustrators in all cultures.

In the Caldecott winners analyzed, Africa is coded as if it continues to exist in

the primitive past. Characters are illustrated as half-naked, living in primitive



188 ALBERS

FIGURE 14 Asian representation in Caldecott literature.

villages, using primitive tools for farming (Feelings, Moja Means One: Swahili

Counting Book, 1971; Feelings, Jambo Means Hello: An African Alphabet

Book, 1974; Grifalconi, The Village of Round and Square Houses, 1986), and/or

engaged in the mystic and mysterious (Brown, Shadow, 1982; Steptoe, Mufaro’s

Beautiful Daughters, 1987). African Americans, for the most part, are depicted

in traditional and historical spaces like the Harlem Renaissance (Isadora, Ben’s

Trumpet, 1979; Myers, Harlem, 1997; Pinkney, Duke Ellington, 1998; Ringgold,

Tar Beach, 1991), as field workers or slaves (Williams, Working Cotton, 1992), as

figures in the Civil Rights movement (Giovanni [Collier, illustrator], Rosa, 2004;

Rappaport [Collier, illustrator], Martin’s Big Words, 2001), and/or in low socio-

economic roles (Bunting, Smoky Night, 1994; Keats, Goggles, 1969; Woodson

[Lewis, illustrator], Coming on Home Soon, 2004; Pilkey, The Paperboy, 1996;

Stewart [Small, illustrator], The Gardener, 1997).

European American culture, however, is not defined by time and space, and

experience cuts across history (Gerstein, The Man Who Walked Between Two

Towers, 2003; McCully, Mirette on the High Wire, 1992; Provensen & Provensen,

The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel with Louis Bleriot, 1983), family

(Bang, When Sophie Gets Angry-Really Really Angry, 1999; Rylant [Gam-

mell, illustrator], The Relatives Came, 1985; Clark [Herrera, illustrator], In My

Mother’s House, 1941; Updike [Schart Hyman, illustrator], A Child’s Calendar,

1999; Yolen [Schoenherr, illustrator], Owl Moon, 1987), and socio-economic

status (Perrault [Marcellino, illustrator], Puss in Boots, 1990; Provensen &

Provensen, The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel with Louis Bleriot, 1983;

Shannon, No, David!, 1998; Stewart [Small, illustrator], The Gardener, 1997; St.

George [Small, illustrator], So You Want to Be President?, 2000). Of all cultures,

European-American culture is least schematically coded and not visually locked

into a particular time and space, yet stability emerges in the variety in which

this culture is represented.

Banks (1997) argued that by age five, children have developed a particular

way of looking at and seeing the world, a bias, especially toward European




American culture. In a theory of looking and seeing, then, by the time children

enter kindergarten, they learn to schematically organize visual information and

can recognize different cultures as rendered by artists across books, times,

and media of expression. They create a set of “memory images” that artists

themselves render and, thus, understand culture as a set of codes—details that

carry concepts, behaviors, and physical characteristics. With every encounter

with texts over time, readers build knowledge, add to their schema about cultural

identities, and develop assumptions about the world. In and out of school, codes

that identify cultural experience are presented as factual and celebrated as tradi-

tion. During a segment of Good Morning America (Berry, 2003), an education

specialist spoke with Diane Sawyer and suggested Thanksgiving activities for

children: create sand paintings, build and play in teepees, and/or make feathered

headdresses. Schematic codes lock culture into “information of a sort” that

romanticizes, rather than makes complex, the evolution of culture over time,

space, and visual representation. Children learn that Native Americans exist

not in the contemporary world of high speed Internet access but in vast plains

on ponies and are warriors with feathers and braided hair (Figure 15). The

codes that exist within this sixth grader’s image resemble Remington, Russell,

Parnall, and Tiger, and she has developed her own memory images of who

Native Americans are.

As children grow up with such romantic stories and engage in activities

considered culturally relevant, they develop a memory for representational codes

and will, like artists, recast them in similar ways, as they were 20 or 1,000 years

ago. Across Caldecott literature, illustrators draw upon previous codes of culture

and retranslate them into similar situations and times, with the twist being the

media or technique used.

FIGURE 15 Eleven-year-old student’s drawing of a Native American.



190 ALBERS

Schematic Codes Render Visual Binaries and Encourage

Oppositional Readings

Across Caldecott literature, illustrators frame stories and set up visual binaries,

or concepts that are arranged in pairs but opposed to each other and that can play

a crucial role in shaping the way viewers look at and see culture in fictional

worlds through illustration. Visual binaries of culture (us–them), and gender

(male–female) significantly play out in Caldecott literature. In nearly all but a

handful of stories in which humans are featured, illustrators framed experiences

from the perspective of single cultures: African American, Native American,

African, European American, and so on. Visual binaries present tensions between

how characters from various cultures live, work, play, and exist in their fictional

worlds versus the contemporary world of the viewer; viewers are positioned

to read “their” experiences in an attempt to relate them to “our” experiences.

Readings of Hirsh’s and Zemach’s images in Figure 12, for example, set up

a visual binary of them—Jewish families of the past—and us, all viewers not

Jewish. Viewers are visually prompted to reflect upon the chaotic life of Jewish

families as opposed to their own, if even for only a few moments. Emotional

and intellectual responses to such chaos can adversely encourage viewers to

see Jewish experience as uninviting and perhaps problematic, especially if their

own world is less than chaotic. Further, if they have no other texts to which to

compare these stories, knowledge about Jewish experience will be grounded in

such folk tales.

A second visual binary, male–female, implicates females as initiators of

the chaos. In both images, Zemach and Hirsh visually position females (who

outnumber males three to one) amidst and as part of the chaos. Viewers are set

up to look at and see the cause of chaos. In opposition, the father is visually

located outside the chaos at the top of the image (Zemach) or clutching the baby

and shielding it from the activity (Hirsh). Visually, then, Zemach and Hirsh teach

viewers to see Jewish experience in folk tales, and viewers read and respond to

the visual binaries and build knowledge and judgments about such experiences

in relation to their own.

In concert with visual binaries is the concept of subject positions, or identities,

that characters take on in illustrations. Artists attempt to encourage the viewer

to see from one of these positions. In Figure 12, family members take on the

subject positions of mother, animal, child, father, and relative. Both Hirsh and

Zemach attempted to position the viewer to take on the subject position of

the father and to look at, see, and feel his frustration. The tension between

the father’s desire for calm within this chaos causes viewers to reflect upon

their own vulnerability if such chaos has occurred in their own experiences. By

occupying this position, even for the several seconds it takes to read the image,

the viewer takes on the gaze of the father. In Zemach’s image, the father has

volume with his outreached hands and white space, and viewers gaze where




he does, at the chaos, and vicariously throw up their own hands in sympathy.

In Hirsh’s image, the viewer takes on the father’s position and looks to the

right of the canvas, wishing for the ideal and calm. As viewers, like the father,

they too wish for the calm and protection from such chaos. Taking on subject

positions does depend on the viewer’s own identity (gender, race, age, and so

on) and gives the viewer status as participant in the fictive scene. Viewers can

imaginatively project themselves into another time and place but do so at the

discretion of the artist.

SUMMARY

Across illustrations, Caldecott artists retranslate schematic or representational

codes, especially as they relate to culture. Such recastings maintain stability in

how culture is represented across time, space, and place. Through use of art

techniques and tools such as representational codes, orientation on the canvas,

volume and mass of objects on the canvas, artists establish stability. Within

artists’ illustrations, visual binaries often emerge and viewers take on particular

positions that an artist desires. Such visual binaries teach viewers to look at and

see their world as artists do.

DISCUSSION

“Art does not imitate life; art anticipates life.” (Winterson, 1995, p. 40)

As scholars of children’s literature have reminded us, how writers and artists

render culture and its members is located within the writers’ or artists’ experi-

ences, beliefs, and attitudes toward the world (Albers, 1996; Enciso, 1994; Fang,

Fu, & Lamme, 1999; Taxel, 1997, 2002). Details that visually depict culture and

its members are not created in a vacuum, but rather are intentionally chosen by

and retranslated by an artist who ultimately wishes to bring recognition and

pleasure to the viewer. I turn now to why understanding the codes within the

illustrations in children’s literature is important to readers and viewers in literacy

education.

Critically Reading and Analyzing Visual Texts

With increased attention in literacy toward multimodality, new literacies, visual-

izing, and representing meaning across systems of communication, critical visual

analysis signifies a more complex process of learning to look at and see the world

as represented in children’s literature and other visual texts. A theory of looking



192 ALBERS

and seeing can initiate discussions that examine the underpinning structures, or

schematic codes, that comprise visual texts, and scholars, teachers, and learners

can talk more thoughtfully and critically about how artists design and create

representation. Just as critical literacy scholars and practitioners have argued

in favor of interrogating written texts that represent people in dehumanizing or

stable ways (Arnstine, 1990; Harste, 2005; Macedo & Bartolomé, 1999; Giroux

& McLaren, 1992; Shannon, 1993; Simon, 1992) and encourage critical talk in

classrooms with children (Comber, 2001; Harste & Leland, 2000; Heffernan,

2004; Heffernan & Lewison, 2000; Lewison et al., 2002; Vasquez, 2004), so

too must visual texts, introduced through picture books, advertisements, clip art,

or photographs, be critically examined using tools of critical visual analysis.

Such analysis invites interesting questions such as, How and why does cultural

identity become articulated through image and word? And, conversely, Should

cultures be portrayed as having identifiable characteristics? Studied within a

theory of looking and seeing, these questions can be more thoughtfully probed by

an examination of children’s literature, popular culture, advertisements, school

posters, and other artifacts.

Visual texts rendered by artists and students, argued Carr (1999), relay in-

formation about culture through the use of “symbols, icons, settings, characters,

emphases, omissions and so on” (p. 2). Subsequently, creators of visual texts rely

on assumptions about the knowledge, experience, and values of those reading

the texts, and build upon them (Hodge & Kress, 1988). Within a theory of

looking and seeing, artists reflect the socio-cultural group in power when the

text is produced and encourage single and more direct readings of culture. This

single-mindedness regarding culture emerges, as Figure 15 shows, in the memory

images created by children who organize and reproduce schematic codes in

their own work. By attending to and reading the underpinning structures, or

schematic codes, that comprise visual texts (e.g., criterial aspects, areas of

canvas, perspective, use of color, design, effective center of attention), literacy

scholars and practitioners can develop a more in-depth understanding of artists’

intentions with regard to representing cultural norms and experiences. Critical

visual analysis within a theory of looking and seeing encourages viewers to

conduct more systematic readings of visual texts. Within such analyses, viewers

can challenge and transform long-held assumptions about culture, encourage new

interpretations and questions, and re-vision the discourse around which visual

texts are looked at, seen, and studied.

Reading and Writing Visual Codes:

Questioning Authenticity

Critically analyzing visual texts within a theory of looking and seeing, and,

in particular, representational codes, also brings into question the on-going




discussion of authenticity of cultural representation. Several books (Fox &

Short, 2003; Lehr, 1995), as well as a number of professional articles (Cai,

1995; Frankel, 1994; Nikola-Lisa, 2002; Pataray-Ching et al., 2001) have been

dedicated to the complexity of cultural authenticity. “An elusive term,” as Sims

Bishop suggested (2003, p. 29), cultural authenticity must be reconsidered by

(a) acknowledging various kinds of criticism; (b) recognizing the challenge of

representing outside one’s culture; and (c) identifying the ideological underpin-

nings of how, where, and why representation of culture occurs. Sims Bishop’s

points are well taken, and literacy researchers and teachers must continue to

probe such points, especially as they relate to visual texts. Yet, a critical dis-

cussion and analysis of artworks remains as elusive as the definition of cultural

authenticity, and when situated within a theory of looking and seeing gives rise

to “insight and discovery” (S. Langer, 1979, p. xii) about the “consistency of

concepts.”

Within a theory of looking and seeing, cultural authenticity is upstaged by

cultural stability in two ways. First, since codes are read, interpreted, and become

“memory images,” how an artist remembers or recalls previous work may be

more relevant than whether he or she is a member of a particular culture. That

Dana Tiger retranslates Native Americans in virtually the same way as Charles

Russell does suggests that, like European American artists, recognition, or the

act of remembering, is automatic and both a conscious and subconscious act.

Her painting is very much like Russell’s, especially when viewed along side

it. Similarly, Susan Guevara (2003), illustrator of Chato’s Kitchen, indicated

that she “copied color from the Mexican American muralist Gronk and learned,

post art-school, how bright colors are even brighter when surrounded by muted

colors and black” (p. 53). When artists draw upon earlier representational codes,

they become multicultural; that is, they can decode and recode representational

details in and across a number of cultures. Yet, the language of artists remains

uncontested, unlike dialogue or dialect in written story, largely because “art is not

our mother-tongue” (Winterson, 1995, p. 4), and viewers do not often recognize

or are conscious of the underpinning structures of art. Consider Trina Schart

Hyman who has illustrated Jewish culture, fairy tales, and family life (Hershel

and the Hanukkah Goblins, Little Red Riding Hood, A Child’s Calendar), Gerald

McDermott who has illustrated Native American and African stories (Raven: A

Trickster Tale from the Pacific Northwest, Arrow to the Sun, Anansi the Spider:

A Tale from the Ashanti), Leo and Diane Dillon and Tom Feelings who have

illustrated and written African stories (Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions, Why

Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears, Jambo Means Hello: A Swahili Alphabet

Book), or John Steptoe’s visual representations of African American and Native

American cultures. The fluidity with which artists can cut across codes suggests

more about their ability to read and retranslate codes than about their being a

member of a particular culture.



194 ALBERS

Second, within a theory of looking and seeing, cultural stability can be

understood in the number of artists who have won multiple awards. Of the

142 total Caldecott illustrators, 50% are repeat winners. Twenty-seven percent

(39 artists) have been awarded two medals, 20% (19 artists) have been awarded 3

medals, 7 artists have 4 awards, and 5 artists have won 5 or more medals (Marcia

Brown, 9 medals; Maurice Sendak, 8 medals). Highlighting these percentages

makes significant the appealing concepts of imitation and recognition. Across

68 years of awards, Caldecott committee members may recognize and find

pleasure in the “information of a sort” visually and culturally rendered. With such

recognition comes pleasurable piquancy, and along with this arguably comes

predictable selections for awards. By awarding illustrators multiple times, the

committee acknowledges and awards stories that stabilize the representation

of culture.

Reading Codes: Implications for Research and Practice

An ability to recognize and read codes (i.e., to look at and see whether the

codes are linguistic, artistic, musical, and so on), is vital when working with

texts that support literacy learning. Stories support young children as they learn

about narrative structure and are an important bridge between what is known

by the reader and what is to be learned. In current literacy research, critical

literacy has located the significance of understanding the invisible meanings

that underpin text, largely from a linguistic perspective. Within a theory of

looking and seeing, viewers visually and critically analyze visual texts, dis-

cuss why and how representations are created, and offer additional information

about how and why young children visually represent their understandings

of the world. Of course, children do not exclusively learn about their world

through literature; other visual imagery such as electronic games, television,

and Internet Web sites contribute as well. However, in schools, young children

are introduced to aspects of the world outside their own through children’s

literature, both fiction and nonfiction. Thus, knowledge about schematic codes

may contribute to insights about children’s interpretations and representations

of the world.

When a theory of looking and seeing is understood, researchers and teachers

alike become more critical about how and why culture is visually represented

as it is. Recent studies that critique representation of occupations or positions

(McElhoe, 1999), gender (Marshall, 2004; Roberts & Hill, 2003; Vallone, 2002),

and race (Hinton, 2004; Nilsson, 2005) suggest that picture books influence the

way that readers read. Such awareness can lead to educators being conscious

of bringing in a wider range of texts that render culture in more complex

ways.




CONCLUSION

Analyzing children’s literature drawing from both linguistic and visual codes can

raise complex issues regarding the significance of children’s literature in literacy

learning. When viewers and readers look at and see artwork with a more critical

eye, they will, as Winterson (1995) suggested, be able to see that “art does not

imitate life. Art anticipates life” (p. 40). Artists learn to anticipate aspects of

an illustration that their viewers will enjoy. Being able to read schematic or

representational codes within artworks will enable readers and viewers, old and

young alike, to engage in more thoughtful, reflective, and action-oriented ways.

REFERENCES

Albers, P. (1996). Issues of representation: Caldecott gold medal winners 1984–1995. The New

Advocate, 9, 267–286.

Albers, P. (1999, December). Unpacking character representations in Caldecott award-winning

literature. Paper presented at the National Reading Conference, Orlando, FL.

Albers, P., & Murphy, S. (2000). Telling pieces: Art as literacy in middle school classes. Mahwah,

NJ: Erlbaum.

Albers, P. (2000, December). Multiculturalism, diversity and Caldecott award-winning literature,

1970–2000. Paper presented at the National Reading Conference, Scottsdale, AZ.

Albers, P. (2003, May). Critical literacy: A semiotic perspective. Paper presented at the International

Reading Association, Orlando, FL.

Albers, P. (2005a, July). Reading art, reading lives. Paper presented at the Whole Language Umbrella

Annual Conference, San Diego, CA.

Albers, P. (2005b, November). Reading images: Stability and predictability in picture book artwork.

Paper presented at the Annual National Council of Teachers of English Conference, Pittsburgh,

PA.

Albers, P. (2007). Visual discourse analysis: An introduction to the analysis of school-generated

visual texts. In D. W. Rowe, R. T. Jimenez, D. L. Compton, D. K. Dickinson, Y. Kim, K. M.

Leander, & V. J. Risko (Eds.), 56th Yearbook of the National Reading Conference (pp. 81–95).

Oak Creek, WI: NRC.

Alexander, V. D. (1994). The image of children in magazine advertisements from 1905 to 1990.

Communication Research, 21, 742–765.

Alvermann, D. E., & Phelps, S. F. (2004). Content reading and literacy: Succeeding in today’s

diverse classrooms. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Applebee, A. N. (1996). Curriculum as conversation: Transforming traditions of teaching and

learning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Appleman, D. (2000). Critical encounters in high school English: Teaching literary theory to

adolescents. New York: Teachers College Press.

Arnstine, D. (1990). Art, aesthetics, and the pitfalls of discipline-based art education. Educational

Theory, 40, 415–422.

Bang, M. (2000). Picture this: Perception and composition. Boston: Bulfinch Press.

Banks, J. A. (1997). Educating citizens in a multicultural society. New York: Teachers College

Press.

Berger, J. (1972). Ways of seeing. New York: Penguin.

Berger, K. (2000). A theory of art. New York: Oxford University Press.



196 ALBERS

Berry, R. (Producer). (2003, November 20). Good morning America [Television broadcast]. New

York: ABC.

Cai, M. (1995). Can we fly across cultural gaps on the wings of imagination?: Ethnicity, experience,

and cultural authenticity. New Advocate, 8, 1–16.

Carr, J. (1999) From ‘sympathetic’ to ‘dialogic’ imagination: Cultural study in the foreign language

classroom. In J. Lo Bianco, A. J. Liddicoat, & C. Crozet (Eds.), Striving for the third place: Inter-

cultural competence through language education (pp. 103–112). Melbourne, Australia: Language

Australia.

Children’s Book Council. (2004). Paul O. Zelinsky. Retrieved November 24, 2004, from http://www.

cbcbooks.org/html/pozelinsky.html

Comber, B. (2001). Negotiating critical literacies. School Talk, 6(3), 1–2.

Comber, B., & Kamler, B. (1997). Critical literacies: Politicizing the language classroom. Interpre-

tations, 30(1), 30–53.

Comber, B., & Simpson, A. (Eds.). (2001). Negotiating critical literacies in the classroom. Mahwah,

NJ: Erlbaum.

Eisner, E. W. (2002). The arts and the creation of mind. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Eisner, E. W. (2003a). The arts and the creation of mind. Language Arts, 80, 340–344.

Eisner, E. W. (2003b). Artistry in education. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 47,

373–384.

Emmison, M. J., & Smith, P. D. (2000). Researching the visual: Images, objects, contexts and

interactions in social and cultural inquiry. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Enciso, P. (1994). Cultural identity and response to literature. Language Arts, 71, 524–528.

Engel, R. (1981). Is unequal treatment of females diminishing in children’s picture books? The

Reading Teacher, 34, 647–652.

Fang, Z., Fu, D., & Lamme, L. L. (1999). Rethinking the role of multicultural literature in literacy

instruction: Problems, paradox, and possibilities. The New Advocate, 12, 259–275.

Fox, D. & Short, K. G. (2003). Stories matter: The complexity of cultural authenticity in children’s

literature. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Frankel, E. (1994). Bias and stereotypes in the portrayal of Palestinian-Arabs in American juvenile

trade fiction, 1957–1985: An analysis of a selected bibliography. Multicultural Review, 3(3), 48–

53.

Freedman, K. (1987). Art education as social production: Culture, society, and politics in the

formation of curriculum. In T. S. Popkewitz (Ed.), The formation of school subjects (pp. 63–

84). New York: Falmer.

Giroux, H. A. (1988). Teachers as intellectuals: Toward a critical pedagogy of learning. Westport,

CT: Bergin & Garvey.

Giroux, H. A., & McLaren, P. (1992). Writing from the margins: Geographies of identity, pedagogy,

and power. Journal of Education, 174(1), 7–30.

Gombrich, E. H. (1994). The image and the eye: Further studies in the psychology of pictorial

representation. New York: Phaidon.

Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Greene, M. (2001). Variations on a blue guitar: The Lincoln Center Institute lectures on aesthetic

education. New York: Teachers College Press.

Guevara, S. (2003). Authentic enough: Am I? Are you? Interpreting culture for children’s literature.

In D. L. Fox & K. G. Short (Eds.), Stories matter: The complexity of cultural authenticity in

children’s literature (pp. 50–60). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Harste, J. C. (2003). What do we mean by literacy now? Voices in the Middle, 10(3) 8–12.

Harste, J. C. (2005, January). How the arts enhance learning. Keynote address. Georgia Read Write

Now Conference, Atlanta, GA.

Harste, J. C., & Leland, C. (2000). Critical literacy: Enlarging the space of the possible. Primary

Voices K–6, 9(2), 3–7.




Heffernan, L. (2004). Critical literacy and writer’s workshop. Newark, DE: International Reading

Association.

Heffernan, L., & Lewison, M. (2000). Making real-world issues our business: Critical literacy in a

third-grade classroom. Primary Voices K–6, 9(2), 15–21.

Heffernan, L., & Lewison, M. (2003). Social narrative writing: (Re)constructing kid culture in

writer’s workshop. Language Arts, 80, 435–443.

Hinton, K. (2004). “Sturdy black bridges”: Discussing race, class, and gender. English Journal,

94(2), 60–64.

Hodge, R., & Kress, G. (1988). Social semiotics. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Holden Dougherty, W., & Engel, R. E. (1987). An 80s look for sex equity Caldecott winners and

honor books. The Reading Teacher, 40, 394–398.

hooks, b. (1995). Art on my mind: Visual politics. New York: The New Press.

Hurley, S. R. (1998). The images of females, minorities, and the aged in Caldecott award-winning

picture books, 1958–1997. Journal of Children’s Literature, 42(1), 58–66.

Itten, J. (1961). The art of color. New York: Reinhold.

Janks, H. (1993). Critical language awareness series. Johannesburg, South Africa: University of

Witwatersrand University Press.

Jewitt, C. and G. Kress (2003). Introduction. In C. Jewitt & G. Kress (Eds.), Multimodal literacy

(pp. 1–8). New York: Peter Lang.

Jones, R. A. (2005). Conversation with Russell Means. Retrieved June 23, 2005, from http://www.

geocities.com/robertofotografie/

Kavanagh, D. J., Andrade, J., & May, J. (2005). Imaginary relish and exquisite torture: The elaborated

intrusion theory of desire. Psychological Review, 112, 446–467.

Kiefer, B. K. (1994). The potential of picture books: From visual literacy to aesthetic understanding.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Kist, W. (2005). New literacies in action: Teaching and learning in multiple media. New York:

Teachers College Press.

Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the new media age. London: Routledge.

Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading images: The grammar of visual design. London:

Routledge.

Langer, S. K. (1958). Reflections on art: A source of writings by artists, critics, & philosophers.

New York: Oxford University Press.

Langer, J. A. (1995). Envisioning literature: Literary understanding and literature instruction. New

York: Teachers College Press.

Langer, S. K. (1979). Philosophy in a new key (3rd ed.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Lehr, S. (Ed.) (1995). Battling dragons: Issues and controversy in children’s literature. Portsmouth,

NH: Heinemann.

Leland, C. H., Harste, J. C., Oceipka, A., Lewison, M., & Vasquez, V. (1999). Exploring critical

literacy: You can hear a pin drop. Language Arts, 77, 70–77.

Lewison, M., Seeley-Flint, A., & Van Sluys, K. (2002). Taking on critical literacy: The journey of

newcomers and novices. Language Arts, 79, 382–392.

Luke, A. (1998). Getting over method: Literacy teaching as work in “new times.” Language Arts,

75, 305–313.

Luke, A., & Freebody, P. (1999). Further notes on The Four Resources Model. Reading Online.

Retrieved September 24, 2007, from readingonline.org/research/lukefreebody.html

Macedo, D. (1994). Literacies of power: What Americans are not allowed to know. Boulder, CO:

Westview Press.

Macedo, D., & Bartolomé, L. (1999). Dancing with bigotry: Beyond the politics of tolerance. New

York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Marshall, E. (2004). Stripping for the wolf: Rethinking representations of gender in children’s

literature. Reading Research Quarterly, 39, 256–270.



198 ALBERS

McElhoe, J. S. (1999). Images of grandparents in children’s literature. The New Advocate, 12,

249–258.

Moi, T. (1986). The kristeva reader. New York: Columbia University Press.

Nikola-Lisa, W. (2002). Hallelujah: A black/white baby Jesus. New Advocate, 15, 133–143.

Nilsson, N. L. (2005). How does Hispanic portrayal in children’s books measure up after 40 years?

The answer is “it depends.” The Reading Teacher, 58, 534–548.

Pataray-Ching, J., & Ching, S. (2001). Supporting and questioning representation. Language Arts,

78, 476–484.

Peck, J., & Hendershot, J. (1999). Release from “Grimm” captivity: Paul O. Zelinsky talks about

the making of “Rapunzel,” the 1998 Caldecott medal winner. The Reading Teacher, 52, 570–575.

Roberts, L.C., & Hill, H. T. (2003). Come and listen to a story about a girl named Rex: Using

children’s literature to debunk gender stereotypes. Young Children, 58(2), 39–42.

Rosenblatt, L. (1995). Literature as exploration (5th ed.). Chicago: Modern Language Association.

Shannon, P. (1993). Developing democratic voices. The Reading Teacher, 47, 86–95.

Simon, R. (1992). Teaching against the grain: Texts for a pedagogy of possibility. New York: Bergin

and Garvey.

Sonesson, G. (1988). Methods and models of pictorial semiotics. Retrieved May 8, 2005, from

http://www.arthist.lu.se/kultsem/pdf/rapport3.pdf/

Sonesson, G. (2004). The quadrature of hermeneutic circles. Retrieved May 8, 2005, from http://www.

chass.utoronto.ca/epc/srb/cyber/Sonesson2.pdf

Spaeth, J. (2005). A touchmark of our cultural heritage. Retrieved November 24, 2004, from

http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/library/Libpub/calde.html

Street, B. (1995). Social literacies: Critical approaches to literacy development, ethnography, and

education. Boston: Addison Wesley.

Taxel, J. (1997). Multicultural literature and the politics of reaction. Teachers College Record, 98,

417–448.

Taxel, J. (2002). Children’s literature at the turn of the century: Toward a political economy of the

publishing industry. Research in the Teaching of English, 37, 145–197.

Vallone, L. (2002). True stories: Feminism and the children’s literature classroom. Journal of

Children’s Literature, 28(2), 10–18.

Vasquez, V. M. (2004). Negotiating critical literacies with young children. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Wilde, O. [Quotation]. Retrieved August 16, 2007, from http://www.famousquotes.com/show.php?_

id=1000433

Winterson, J. (1995). Art objects: Essays on ecstasy and effrontery. London: J. Cape.

CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

Aardema, V. (1975). Why mosquitoes buzz in people’s ears. New York: Dial.

Ackerman, K. (1988). Song and dance man. New York: Knopf.

Baker, O. (1981). Where the buffaloes begin. New York: Warne.

Bang, M. (1999). When Sophie gets angry—really, really angry. New York: Scholastic.

Baylor, B. (1987). The desert is theirs. New York: Scribner and Sons.

Brown, M. (1982). Shadow. New York: Aladdin.

Bunting, E. (1994). Smoky night. New York: Harcourt.

Chodos-Irvine, M. (2003). Ella Sarah gets dressed. New York: Harcourt.

Feelings, M. (1971). Moja means one: Swahili counting book. New York: Dial.

Feelings, M. (1974). Jambo means hello: A Swahili alphabet book. New York: Dial.




Foreman, M. (1978).The Brothers Grimm popular folk tales. London: Gollancz.

Gerstein, M. (2003). The man who walked between the towers. Brookfield, CT: Roaring Brook Press.

Giovanni, N. (2005). Rosa. New York: Henry Holt.

Grifalconi, (1986). The village of round and square houses. New York: Little, Brown.

Handforth, T. (1938). Mei li. New York: Doubleday.

Hirsh, M. (1974). Could anything be worse? A Yiddish tale. New York: Holiday House.

Isadora, R. (1979). Ben’s trumpet. New York: Greenwillow.

Jarrell, R. (1987). Snow-White and the seven dwarfs. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Jeffers, S. (1973). Three jovial huntsmen. New York: Bradbury.

Keats, J. E. (1969). Goggles. Macmillan.

Kerley, B. (2001). The dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins. New York: Scholastic.

Kimmel, E. (1989). Hershel and the Hanukkah goblins. New York: Holiday House.

Macaulay, D. (1977). Castle. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Macaulay, D. (1990). Black and white. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

McCully, E. A. (1992). Mirette on the high wire. New York: Putnam.

McDermott, G. (1974). Arrow to the sun. New York: Viking Press.

McDermott, G. (1993). Raven: A trickster tale from the Pacific Northwest. New York: Harcourt.

McKissack, P. C. (1988). Mirandy and brother wind. New York: Knopf.

Mosel, A. (1972). The funny little woman. New York: Dutton.

Musgrove, M. (1976). Ashanti to Zulu: African traditions. New York: Dial.

Myers, W. D. (1997). Harlem. New York: Scholastic.

Newell, P. (1907). Favorite fairy tales: The childhood choice of representative men and women.

New York: Harper Brothers.

Peet, B. (1989). Bill Peet: An autobiography. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Pilkey, D. (1996). The paperboy. New York: Richard Jackson/Orchard Books.

Pinkney, A. D. (1998). Duke Ellington: The piano prince and the orchestra. New York: Hyperion.

Provensen, A., & Provensen, M. (1983). The glorious flight: Across the channel with Louis Bleriot.

New York: Viking.

Rappaport, D. (2001). Martin’s big words. New York: Hyperion.

Ringgold, F. (1991). Tar beach. New York: Scholastic.

Rylant, C. (1982). When I was young and in the mountains. New York: Dutton.

Rylant, C. (1985). The relatives came. New York: Bradbury.

Say, A. (1993). Grandfather’s journey. New York: Houghton.

Schart Hyman, T. (1983). Little red riding hood. New York: Holiday Books.

Shannon, D. (1998). No, David! New York: Scholastic.

Snyder, D. (1988). The boy of the three-year nap. New York: Houghton.

Steptoe, J. (1987). Mufaro’s beautiful daughters. New York: Lothrup.

Stewart, S. (1997). The gardener. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.

Taback, S. (1999). Joseph had a little overcoat. New York: Viking.

Updike, J. (1999). A child’s calendar. New York: Holiday House.

Van Allsburg, C. (1985). The polar express. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Wiesner, D. (1999). Sector 7. New York: Clarion.

Wiesner, D. (1991). Tuesday. New York: Clarion.

Willard, N. (1981). A visit to William Blake’s inn: Poems for innocent and experienced travelers.

New York: Harcourt.

Williams, S. A. (1992). Working cotton. New York: Harcourt.

Woodson, J. (2004). Coming on home soon. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

Yashima, T. (1955). Crow boy. New York: Viking.

Zelinsky, P. O. (1997). Rapunzel. New York: Dutton.

Zemach, M. (1977). It could always be worse. New York: Farrar.



200 ALBERS

ARTWORKS

Bearden, R. (1977). Mother and child. Reprinted with permission from Bryn Mawr College Collec-

tions, Roy R. Neuberger Collection, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA.

Lima, C. (2004). Madonna. Reprinted with permission from the artist.

Lorenzetti, P. (1280–1348). Madonna and child. Reprinted with permission from The Uffizi Gallery,

Palazzo degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy.

Remington, F. (1909). The outlier. Reprinted with permission from Brooklyn Museum, Department

of Rights and Reproductions, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238-6052.

Robinson, D. (n.d.). Portrait of Van Gogh. Reprinted with permission from the artist.

Rodrigue, G. (2000). Dreaming of you. Reprinted with permission from the Rodrigue Studio

Lafayette, 1434 S. College Rd., Lafayette, LA 70503.

Rossellino, A. (1460s). Virgin and child. Reprinted with permission from The State Hermitage

Museum, 34, Dvortsovaya Embankment, St. Petersburg, 190000, Russia.

Russell, C. (1907). The scout. Reprinted with permission from Sid Richardson Collection of Western

Art, Fort Worth, TX.

Tiger, D. (n.d.). Quest for peace. Reprinted with permission from artist.

Van Rijn, Rembrandt (1668). The Jewish bride. Reprinted with permission from Rijksmuseum

Amsterdam.

Peggy Albers is an associate professor at Georgia State University (GSU). Her

current research interests are focused on the visual arts and literacy including

visual discourse analysis, critical arts-integration in English and literacy educa-

tion, children’s literature, and new literacies. As a ceramics artist, Albers enjoys

documenting and producing shorts of studio potters’ processes, techniques, and

beliefs. With degrees from the University of South Dakota (M.A. in Curriculum

and Instruction) and Indiana University (Ph.D. in Language Education), Albers

has served the English and literacy education profession in a number of ways:

Editor of Talking Points, contributor to Whole Language Umbrella (WLU)

journal, guest editor of themed issues for English Education and Primary Voices,

K–6, and executive board member of WLU. Before starting her university career

at GSU, Albers worked for 15 years as an English, speech, and drama teacher

at the middle and high school levels in both the U.S. and England. She can

be contacted at the College of Education, MSIT Department, Georgia State

University, Atlanta, GA 30303. E-mail: [email protected].



Documents

163.full