Tag Archives: picturebook

The Three Little Pigs Postmodern Picturebook Review

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Hello Everyone,

For my advanced children’s literature source this summer, I was required to evaluate a postmodern picturebook. Below is my evaluation of David Wiesner’s The Three Little Pigs. (An abridged review of the title is also on Goodreads.)

The Three PigsThe Three Pigs by David Wiesner

Summary

The story starts out retelling how three little pigs build houses out of straw, sticks, and brick, with a wolf visiting to huff and puff down each house. What happens with the house of straw when the wolf puffs, however, is unique to any retelling of the classic tale and is carried through the intended decimation of the other two houses. The pigs each escape their houses and travel through storybooks to meet the cat with the fiddle and a dragon, bringing both new characters back to the brick house and startling the wolf by having the dragon answer the door of the brick house.

Reaction

I heartily laughed often as this story progresses, especially as the pigs leave their story and travel to two storybook worlds. Children, well versed in the basic plot of “The Three Little Pigs,” will enjoy the surprises in this version, especially as the pigs visit other storybooks. This book would connect to the English language arts curriculum and the AASL standards by providing students opportunities to consider different points of view and alternative plots and endings for well-known stories.

Postmodern Picturebook Evaluation

Published in 2001, this title is a postmodern picture book because it plays with the idea of it being a retelling of a classic children’s story by including characters from other stories, a dragon from fairy tale world and the cat and the fiddle from nursery rhyme world, which is an example of “intertextuality” (Hintz & Tribunella, 2013, p. 144-145); metafictionality, “when a fiction text reveals awareness of its own fictional status” (Hintz & Tribunella, p. 165), is evident in the pigs wandering through the pages of their story and using one of them as an airplane to fly to the other storybook worlds. The pigs “exit [their] story” and acknowledge the presence of the reader, even though they do not speak to the reader (Dresang, 2008, p. 296); for example, the pig from the house comments that someone is out there (Wiesner, 2001). Towards the end of the story, the text of some sentences spills across the page, with the pigs collecting the letters for the new concluding sentence, another example of  metafictionality in that Wiesner “[manipulates] the whole physical space of” the page (Hintz & Tribunella, p. 165).

Picturebook Evaluation: The Size of the Book

The book is approximately nine and a half inches high by eleven and a half inches wide. Physically, it seems to fit the traditional concept of picturebooks being wider than they are tall, presumably better for sharing between reader and child.

Picturebook Evaluation: The Size of Picture Against the Page

On every page, there is some semblance of “white space” (Hintz & Tribunella, p. 169), with some pictures requiring “double-page spread[s]” (Hintz & Tribunella, p. 168), for instance, the dragon emerging from his story, aided by the pigs (Wiesner, 2001). Often, especially in the traditional sections, pages have single framed pictures with large areas of white space or frames spreading between one or two pages to show action.

Picturebook Evaluation: The Composition of Objects on the Page

Depending on the action on a given page or double-page spread, the pigs’ size shifts from very small when flying away on the paper airplane to medium size to the pig from the straw house almost taking up the entire page when it comments about the reading; in this instance of largeness, the pig seems “strong” and able to identify the readers’ presence (Hintz & Tribunella, p. 169). The dragon from the fairy tale is the largest character in the book, thus the strongest of the characters and seemingly the one who can most effectively frighten the wolf away from the brink house (Wiesner, 2001).

Picturebook Evaluation: The Use, Amount, and Quality of Color

Wiesner uses both warm and cool colors to depict the worlds of the pigs and their storybook friend the cat and the fiddle; the dragon’s storybook pages are cream and brown, possibly to imitate black-and-white illustrations of older, classic picturebooks. The nursery rhyme book pages are more saturated than the three little pigs’ book pages, possibly making those pages into a more “restful” (Hintz & Tribunella, p. 169) place in which the pigs will not be attacked by the wolf. After the pigs have left their story, their “images are depicted with their shadows” (Hintz & Tribunella, p. 170) which makes them more realistic.

Picturebook Evaluation: The Strength of Line

The lines are mostly thin, making the character depictions “detailed and intricate” (Hintz & Tribunella, p. 170), especially the seemingly three-dimensional illustrations of the pigs after they leave their story (Wiesner, 2001).

Picturebook Evaluation: Mixed Media

The illustrations were made using five different media, and namely watercolor, gouache, colored inks, pencil, and colored pencil, according to the verso page at the front of the book. The combination of ink and watercolor give Most sections “Atmospheric effects while simultaneously suggesting spatial depth” (as cited in Hintz & Tribunella, p. 172). The nursery rhyme book pages were most likely accomplished with watercolor since they have a “transparent and luminous” appearance with a “dreamlike atmosphere” (Hintz & Tribunella, p. 172); pencil lines most likely contributed to the “density and depth” of the shadows under the three-dimensional pigs (Hintz & Tribunella, p. 172).

Picturebook Evaluation: Setting

The setting of the pages shifts from the “realistic” to the “fanciful” (Hintz & Tribunella, p. 173) with framed full-page or double-page illustrations melding into animals loosened from their storybook pages and roaming, what may very well be, the storybook countryside, since the pigs can choose which stories to enter from an array of pages (Wiesner, 2001).

Picturebook Evaluation: Text Within the Pictures

The text within the pictures follows traditional storybook conventions at the beginning with the text in nice neat rows at the top of the framed illustrations. As the pigs escape from their houses, they speak to each other in speech bubbles close to their mouths (Wiesner, 2001), similar to comic books and graphic novels. To mirror the scattered and crumpled pages of the traditional story, the text slants diagonally and sideways (Wiesner, 2001), perhaps to show the haphazard mess the story is in when the pigs escape. Once the wolf is frightened by the dragon, the text of the traditional story is jumbled in spots (Wiesner, 2001), making the sentences unreadable, perhaps to show his confusion at seeing a dragon.

Enthusiastically,

Ms Tyler

References

Dresang, E. T. (2008). Radical change revisited: Dynamic digital age books for youth. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 8(3), 294-304.

Hintz, C. & Tribunella, E. L. (2013). Reading children’s literature: A critical introduction. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins.

Wiesner, D. (2001). The three little pigs. New York, NY: Clarion Books.

Clifford’s Big Dig eBook Picturebook Evaluation

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Hello Everyone,

For my advanced children’s literature course this summer, I was required to evaluation an eBook picturebook. Below is my evaluation of Clifford’s Big Dig, an eBook available in both English and Spanish through Scholastic.

clifford

Summary

Clifford is digging a hole in his backyard looking for something. He finds big items of different colors, and readers get to choose what he finds; they also choose how he looks for the bone he hid. At the end of the story, readers see a pile of things Clifford found on his big dig (Scholastic, Inc., n.d.).

Reaction

Intrigued by Hintz and Tribunella’s (2013) discussion of Emily Elizabeth Goes to School and its interactive qualities (p. 181) and its inclusion as a possible eBook resource for exploration on the LME 518 Discussion Board for picturebooks, I wondered if Scholastic offered additional titles. Clifford’s Big Dig is one of four interactive storybooks offered by Scholastic featuring “Clifford the Big Red Dog.” Since these four storybooks all focus on providing early readers with “phonics fun” (Scholastic, Inc., 2016), Clifford’s Big Dig has read-aloud options for every sentence, and the items the readers choose are phonemically similar words of one syllable. After choosing an item, the readers see Clifford with the item, which reinforces the meanings behind the words. This title aligns with the English language arts curriculum by providing opportunities for students to practice reading high-frequency words, a concept geared towards younger readers as the website advertises.

eBook Picturebook Evaluation

Accessed online, Clifford’s Big Dig is a digital text because it offers readers interactivity, that is the ability to “change the text…in some way” (Hintz & Tribunella, p. 182), by providing opportunities “to fill in a word [in several sentences]…[thus] changing the narrative” (Hintz & Tribunella, p. 181). Readers choose from three options five different times to decide what Clifford finds in the hole he dug, with which thing he will dig for his bone, and which action Clifford will take when he sees something in the hole (Scholastic, Inc., n.d.).

Enthusiastically,

Ms. Tyler

References

Hintz, C. & Tribunella, E. L. (2013). Reading children’s literature: A critical introduction. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins.

Scholastic, Inc. (n.d.). Clifford’s big dig. Retrieved from http://teacher.scholastic.com/clifford1/build/story2_en.htm

Scholastic, Inc. (2016). Clifford the big red dog interactive storybooks: Phonics fun for early readers. Retrieved from http://teacher.scholastic.com/clifford1/

The Lion and The Mouse Picturebook Evaluation

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Hello Everyone,

For my advanced children’s literature course this summer, I was required to evaluate a picturebook. Below is my evaluation of Jerry Pinkney’s The Lion and The Mouse. (An abridged review is also available on Goodreads)

The Lion and the MouseThe Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney

Summary

Telling an Aesop fable wordlessly, Jerry Pinkney uses vivid illustrations to show how a lion decides to let a mouse go, which, in turn, saves him from a hunters’ trap. Both animals learn from the experiences a lesson more important than survival, that of the meek triumphing over the mighty, as stated in the artist’s note concluding the tale (Pinkney, 2009). This version of the fable attempts to provide background information on the lives of the lion and the mouse by depicting them with families for which they care, and shows the mouse almost being captured by an owl before disturbing the lion (Pinkney, 2009).

Reaction

This wordless picturebook version of the Aesop fable “The Lion and The Mouse” is beautifully illustrated. Having only “sound effect” words as the text within the pictures, the book allows students opportunities to practice retelling the plot and try their hand at writing dialog for the characters, which connect with the English language arts curriculum and the AASL standards. Elementary students of all ages will be intrigued by the colorful and vibrant illustrations that fuel the story’s plot.

Picturebook Evaluation: The Size of the Book

The book measures approximately nine and three-fourths inches high by eleven and a half inches wide. Physically, it seems to fit the traditional concept of picturebooks being wider than they are tall, presumably better for sharing between reader and child.

Picturebook Evaluation: The Size of Picture Against the Page

Pinkney uses every inch of almost every page, with some pictures requiring “double-page spread[s]” (Hintz & Tribunella, 2013, p. 168). Some pages have single framed pictures with large areas of “white space” surrounding the frames (Hintz & Tribunella, p. 169), while others have frames spreading between two pages to show action, such as when the mouse hears the lion’s roar and goes to help him (Pinkney, 2009).

Picturebook Evaluation: The Composition of Objects on the Page

The lion and the mouse are representatively proportioned on all pages, making the lion appear “stronger” (as cited in Hintz & Tribunella, p. 169). Since both characters appear in the “middle” of pages at different times in the story, each is the “center of attention” (as cited in Hintz & Tribunella, p. 169). By using every inch of most pages, especially showing the animals in their natural habitats, Pinkney (2009) depicts the impressiveness and expansiveness of the African Serengeti of Tanzania and Kenya, which he identifies as the setting in the artist’s note.

Picturebook Evaluation: The Use, Amount, and Quality of Color

Pinkney uses both warm and cool colors with varying saturation to portray the mighty lion and humble mouse appropriately, as well as the color African Serengeti setting.

Picturebook Evaluation: The Strength of Line

“A number of thin lines” make this book “seem very detailed and intricate” (Hintz & Tribunella, p. 170), since, for example, the fur of the animals and the strength of the rope are meticulously drawn with tiny, thin, often overlapping, lines.

Picturebook Evaluation: Mixed Media

The illustrations were made using three different media, namely pencil, watercolor, and colored pencils on paper, according to the verso page at the end of the book. The colored and regular pencils contribute “density and depth” through the lines produced, while the watercolor medium is think, making it “realistic,” produced by the “free, loose strokes” (Hintz & Tribunella, p. 172).

Picturebook Evaluation: Setting

The setting of each page or double-page spreads shifts from “highly developed” to “minimal” in a realistic way (Hintz & Tribunella, p. 173), depending on the content of the pages. When the lion examines the mouse before releasing it, the background of the pages is cream and devoid of external location, yet preceding pages show the mouse venturing from its home as dawn rises from the “east” of the page. The focus of the page or spread on the interaction among or the action of the characters opposes the exterior location illustrations that provide plot or background contextualization.

Picturebook Evaluation: Text Within the Pictures

Text within the illustrations is used minimally to denote the noises made by the animal characters (Pinkney, 2009). Interestingly, the only sound attributed to the human characters in the book is the noise made by their jeep driving along a dirt path (Pinkney, 2009).

Enthusiastically,

Ms. Tyler

References

Hintz, C. & Tribunella, E. L. (2013). Reading children’s literature: A critical introduction. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins.

Pinkney, J. (2009). The lion and the mouse. New York, NY: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.