Week 7 - Illustrated children books

The history of children's book started since the 17th century in London.
19th century onwards it became easily available and lots of them were being produce.

There are 2 main categories of illustrated children's book:
1) Storybook/illustrated book
2) Picture book

The difference between storybook and picture book are, a storybook can be understood by words alone - the illustration or picture in it only serve by adding dimension to the text but you don't need them to understand the story.
As for picture books, you require both words and picture. Pictures alone are not sufficient to tell the story.

There are 2 major aspects of production process that had great impact on the appearance and structure of illustrated children's book.
1) The relationship between author and writer
2) The printing process

The relationship between author and illustrator can vary in many ways.
a) Author and illustrator are two different people.
-they might be working closely on the whole process
-the publisher chooses the illustrator, and the author has no say
-the author is no longer alive, so the illustrator can express freely
-the material/text has long been in the public domain (example: number and nursery rhymes)

b)Author and illustrator are the same person.
- text and illustrator by the same person (example: Struwwel Peter, story and illustration by Dr Heinrich Hoffmanm)
- illustrator and re-write existing text in their own words

There are advantages and disadvantages in both ways. If the author and illustrator can write as well as illustrate, it will work to the advantage to convey exactly what the author wants to say. On the other hand if the author is not a good illustrator, the final product will not be as effective. And sometimes using another person as an illustrator can borden the way of how the book appear to the audience even the author is a good illustrator.

2)Production method
The printing processes have great influenced the design of illustrated children's book:
- illustrator are constrained by technology available to reproduce the image to the techniques they wanted
- issue of cost (for example early children book printed using lithography can only use one side of the paper)
- mostly black/white due to the production cost (colour often added by hand- child labour/women)
- limited to a number of colours
- layout of the book are restricted (text and images)