Once upon a time—before Dr. Freud uncovered the subconscious lives of children and Dr. Spock inspired permissive parenthood—it was said that children should be seen but not heard. Not so today. Children Should Be Seen: The Image of the Child in American Picture-Book Art looks at, listens to, interprets, and celebrates childhood experience, as seen in children’s books of the last 10 years.
Three curators selected 83 works, a single image from each book. As Nick Clark, founding director of the Eric Carle Museum, points out, these images do not tell their own individual stories, but combine as part of a broader tale. One story told by the exhibit is that the illustrations, like mirrors, reflect how we experience childhood. Another narrative emphasizes that these are sophisticated works of art. “My mantra,” says Clark, “is that so many of these artists have a deep grounding in art history.”
But before we peek in the mirror to see what picture-book art reveals about childhood today, an introductory section gives the backstory of picture book art from 1957-97. Robert McCloskey’s Time of Wonder presents what Clark describes as “an Ozzie-and-Harriet, Leave-it-to-Beaver type of family.” In a stereotypical division of labor, Mother reads to the children while Father mends the door. This fixed social order contrasts with the joyous entropy of The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss—and perhaps Dr. Spock joins Dr. Seuss in the idea of children left alone to create their own adventures.
Dr. Freud also enters the picture in the 1960s, with the work of Maurice Sendak. Curator Leonard S. Marcus writes in the catalogue, “As knowledge of Freud fed Sendak’s imagination, traditional picture-book taboos swiftly fell at his hand: first Max got mad [Where the Wild Things Are], then Mickey got naked [In the Night Kitchen]. Wild Things has smoothly merged into the mainstream—as a ballet, a musical, and a live-action movie (due in 2008)—but In the Night Kitchen remains controversial, banned in four states and ranked 25th on the American Library Association’s 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000.
Another development during 1957-97 was the emergence of multiculturalism and diversity. Ezra Jack Keats’s The Snowy Day was, says Clark, “one of the earliest books depicting the African American child with dignity,” and, he adds, it often surprised people to discover Keats was Caucasian. Soon, however, African American artists and authors told their own stories in children’s picture books. John Steptoe, for example, was 16 years old when he started Stevie, which explores the relationship between a young boy and his foster brother, and was only 19 when the book was published to great acclaim. Even greater demand for African American and African subjects arose in response to the civil rights movement and the growth of the black middle class, Clark explains, paralleling a similar emergence of Latino children’s literature.
The happy influence of Dr. Spock is easy to appreciate in “The New Child,” with a range of illustrations that convey what Clark calls “the awe and wonder of infancy—whether you are the child or the parent of the child.” Some of these images look, as he says, “through the human lens” with a child’s-eye view and sensibility, while others delight in “the surrogates of animals.” Human or surrogate, these images revel in the well-loved child’s discovery of the world, assertion of personality, and growth of imagination.
A more complex psychological story unfolds in “The Child and the Family.” In these works, the child no longer fills the page front and center, and this reminds us how small a child can feel among looming adults. The image by Harry Bliss entitled “I’ve run away! Do you miss me yet?” from Don’t Forget to Come Back may look like a cartoon with text bubbles, but it taps into the potent vein of separation anxiety. And the illustration from G. Brian Karas’s Are You Going to be Good? also wears anxiety on its sleeve, casting a child’s eye on adult expectations. Even more heartwrenching is “They didn’t want me?” from Allen Say’s Allison, dealing with a young girl’s feelings about being adopted. As Clark says, “These are not warm and fuzzy.”
Similar complexities emerge in “The Child at School and at Play.” The colorful whimsy and light-heartedness of Maira Kalman’s animal-filled classroom, from Smarty-Pants: Pete in School, presents the sunny side of social relations. But the cruelty of children is shown in Giselle Potter’s illustration for The Boy Who Loved Words. All the children wear somewhat anachronistic garb, but eloquent details identify and isolate the outcast child. Is it the way his hair parts down the middle? Perhaps it’s that sweater vest… or maybe the way he slumps in his seat.
Potter’s image is resonant—who escapes unscathed from the social hierarchies of middle school? —but the scariest image may be Peggy Rothman’s frontispiece from The Day the Babies Crawled Away. Tucked under the rubric of “The Child in the Community,” Rothman’s art evokes the long shadow of 19th-century illustrator Arthur Rackham, but also the powerful ambiguity of a well-known artist working today with silhouettes, Kara Walker. With delicate silhouettes against colorful skies, the story details a lovely day at the fair, all pony rides and pie-eating contests, until one boy notices five babies crawling further and further and inexorably further away—a parent’s nightmare.
“The Questioning Child” focuses on the child’s active curiosity in examining his or her surroundings and skepticism towards an adult-defined world. The cut-paper collage from Wings by Christopher Myers explores the child’s dawning sense of identity, drawing on the classical Greek myth of Icarus—in an artwork of expressionist color and distortion. Other artists pull us into participating in the child’s discovery process, through use of perspective and composition.
“The New Picture Book” considers changes in book design, improved printing technologies, and the influence of digital media. Moveable pop-up books like Paul Zelinsky’s Knick-Knack Paddywhack! are not new, of course, but they are fun and can be seen as precursors to the interactive experiences that computers make possible. Other artists explore unusual perspectives, with free-floating characters or a house turned topsy-turvy. Brian Pinckney combines the fluidity of painting with linear scratchboard techniques, literally drawing on his extensive experience in printmaking. The plunging angles of “Later, as Henry rode along” from The Adventures of Sparrowboy pull us into the picture plane, so that we are lurching alongside Henry on his bicycle. And once pulled into the picture, it’s easier to see the wonderful variations in line and texture that Pinckney achieves through mixed media.
For all the possibilities of the new, Children Should Be Seen is also a tribute to picture-book artists’ skill with traditional fine art media and to the joys of seeing the actual, original work, with all the texture of the paint, the delicacy of the line, and the three-dimensional depth of the collaged images. This is yet another story told by the exhibition: no matter how lavishly designed and produced the picture book may be, there is really nothing like seeing the original artwork.
Children Should Be Seen: The Image of the Child in American Picture-Book Art, at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, 125 W. Bay Road, Amherst, through March 9, 2008.
