Basic Information

• Title: Sylvester and the Magic Pebble• Author/Illustrator: William Steig• Publisher, Copyright: An imprint of Simon & Schuster

Children’s Publishing Division, copyright 1969• Award: 1970 Caldecott Medal winner

Style/Media

• The author used more than one style in this book. He used cartoon art to portray the characters in this story. Realism was also used throughout the story even though the characters were animals being portrayed as real people. You can see in the pictures the animals in the story are doing things that real humans do on a regular basis. From sweeping the floor to reading the news paper. The drawings used throughout the story are also cartoon like drawings.

Line

• The lines used in Sylvester and the Magic Pebble vary throughout the story. The author used many different lines to create the story. For example in the first picture the author uses long slanted lines to create the look of rain. In the next picture the straight lines were used to create the look of hard wood floors. Straight lines were also used in this picture to create the look of bricks. The lines on the next picture vary in size and thickness. The author used long lines to create the trees and short lines to create the grass. The hills and mountains were made using long, thick lines. Lines were also used to make the stars in the sky. Lines were used to make facial expressions on the characters in the book. By using the lines we could tell if the characters were happy, sad, mad or surprised. Lines don’t have to be one size or style and the author showed that throughout the story.

Shape

• The shapes used in this story are simple and some are two dimensional. In the first picture you can see the house does have some depth to it but it is a very simple and basic house with not a lot of detail. The stepping stones are a basic oval shape. Round shapes were used often throughout the story for the sun, rocks, flowers, pebbles, balls, spots on the dogs, yarn, and plates. The author showed us in this story that you can use a basic shape such as a circle to create many different objects.

Color

• The author used many different colors in this story. What is most noticeable to me when reading this story is how the author used color to show the change in seasons. The story went from fall, where the leaves are orange, red, and yellow to winter where basically the page is white with a little color from the brown wolf and tree branches. The author then uses bright colors to show spring has arrived. This is shown by the bright greens, pinks, and blues used in the pictures. The use of color on the sun shows how hot and nice of a day it is in the story. Darker colors such as the blues and dark greens shows its night time in the story. The dark colors were also used to portray a thunder storm.

Texture

• Texture is seen throughout the book and I think most noticeable on the characters. The lions main and fur both look to be smooth and soft to the touch. The author achieves this look by the brush strokes and lines he uses in his illustrations. The author also made the mountains and hills in the story look smooth to the touch by the brush strokes he used.

Composition

• The illustrations used in this book are symmetrical. For the most part the pictures are at the top of the page with the writing underneath the pictures. The pages in this story do have a lot of white space. The pictures do not cover up the whole page. The pictures all have soft, rounded edges to them. The leaves, trees, hills, and mountains in the story were all proportioned to how we see them in real life.