Art

I was intrigued by this week's professional and scholarly readings. The two articles I found the most interesting were by Gratia Banta and Barbara Kiefer.

Gratia Banta, in her article "Reading Pictures, Searching for Excellence in Picture Books”, focuses on the value of picture book illustrations. Banta strongly believes that one must acquire knowledge of art term/vocabulary and art history to accurately evaluate illustrations in a picture book. Additionally, Banta feels that traditional categories of art styles are applicable to modern illustrations. Though Banta served on the Caldecott Committee she does agree with their method of evaluating illustrations. She is in the camp that illustrations should be appraised separately from the text of the picture book. Contrarily, I believe that text and illustrations should harmonize; therefore, it would be negligent to critique one without the other. Similarly, Barbara Kiefer in her article "Visual Criticism and Children's Literature", believes that illustration and text should complement each other. Simply put, “the illustrator, on the other hand, is bound to a specific idea or narrative, with some intent, at least, to convey a specific meaning to an audience” (77). Kiefer takes an in-depth look, with many examples, of how illustrations convey meaning. Contrasting with Banta, Kiefer does not think that applying traditional categories of art styles useful when appraising modern art. Instead, she believes that semiotic theory is helpful in the evaluation of picture books. I was captivated by Kiefer’s style of writing and I am in compliance with her ideas.

Kiefer’s article suggests that the production of the illustrations should reflect the original media used to create the art. For example, if oil pastels are used to create the illustrations the paper in the book should have a reflective surface which mimics the luster of the pastels. This is an idea I would not have thought of. She clearly articulates why and how to critique illustrations in picture books. Furthermore, Kiefer includes an extremely useful appendix that outlines elements to consider when evaluating picture books.

Though Banta's article was informative, had some good points, gave an extensive suggested reading list, I have to say that I was not all about her her writing style or her position on how to critique picture book illustrations.

Simply put, Kiefer rocks and Banta doesn't!


Kiefer, Barbara. 1993. Visual criticism and children’s literature. In Evaluating children’s books, 73-88. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: GSLIS.

Banta, Gratia J. 2004. Reading pictures: Searching for excellence in picture books. Children and libraries 2(3): 30-34