Picture books and the moral imperative
Stuart Marriott University of Ulster
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland, August 27th to August 30th
The next settlement was Erasmo, a village smaller than Avellenada, but substantial enough to boast a sizeable school building over whose doorway were inscribed the words Lectura - locura. I asked the driver if he could translate, and after some hesitations he found the words. “Reading, lectura. Lectura, reading,” he said proudly. “And locura?” “Is madness, pardner.” The Moor's Last Sigh (Rushdie, 1995)
I am not entirely sure what Salman Rushdie means to convey in this enigmatic little passage towards the end of a brilliant novel, but perhaps it is a salutary reminder that the act of reading is not always as innocuous and predictable as it appears but is sometimes uncertain, irrational or even threatening (and he should know). Picture books have not yet given rise to any fatwa, as far as I know, but they too are usually more complicated and occasionally more potent than they seem at first glance.
Multiple approaches
One perennial view of picture books is as an age-related form of entertainment particularly appropriate for children before and in the early stages of formal schooling. Such very young children are assumed to be capable of eager response to materials of a wide variety of types and styles in which a story, however fragmentary, is sustained mainly or entirely through pictures. The question of how children learn to make sense of pictures or by what process they learn to respond to the narrative structure of picture books is not usually raised, or if it is the assumption tends to be that the development of such capacities is implicit in cognitive and emotional maturation and is thus unproblematic. It is also assumed that such maturation will eventually lead children away from picture books into what are regarded as more sophisticated or at least more elaborate entertainments; picture books, in this view, have little or no relevance for older children, and certainly none for adults.
These two ideas, that picture books are an age-related phenomenon and that the ability to understand pictures is an unambiguous skill which young children automatically develop, often lead to a third, that picture books provide a kind of prop which sustains and supports the initially incompetent beginning reader. More or less explicit within such accounts is the conviction that in time the crutches the picture book affords can be cast aside as the child's increasing expertise in decoding the printed word unaided enables him or her to dispense with them. And often implicit is the belief that the sooner that children's behaviour resembles that of the adult reader, seen as routinely and skilfully absorbing pages of unbroken and unillustrated print, the better (1). This view is often held by older children themselves who resist picture books on the grounds that they are babyish. However, once again, such a perspective leaves a variety of questions unanswered and often unaddressed. By what mechanism, through what mental process, does illustration enable readers to comprehend the written word more competently? Do pictures truly support the efforts of the beginning reader or do they in fact, as Bettelheim and Zelan (1991) have argued, distract his or her attention from a proper concentration on decoding print? Does not the real reading behaviour of competent adults include texts which incorporate both words and pictures such as newspapers, magazines, advertisements, road signs, maps, plans and diagrams, as well as illustrated books about cookery or gardening
or DIY or whatever (not to mention the huge numbers of picture books and comic books written specifically for older readers and adults)? If so what are the implications for the initial teaching of reading?
If these are relatively ingenuous or at least somewhat partial descriptions of the picture book form there exist in addition many much more subtle and comprehensive approaches, such as those of Graham (1990), Meek (1988), Nodelman (1988) and Lewis (1990). Quite often, however, these subsume what are genuinely stimulating and illuminating discussions of picture books within more general accounts of either written children's literature or of the visual arts; in other words they tend to see the picture book as a sub-species of the novel, or of painting, and to apply critical techniques accordingly. Thus, for example, in Landsberg's (1988) lengthy survey of children's literature picture books are only very briefly discussed (in a chapter revealingly titled “Books to encourage the beginning reader”) as one genre within the totality of written fiction for children. In complete contrast, Doonan (1993) has developed accounts of the work of picture book authors which explore visual effects in great detail using a variety of critical concepts derived from the vocabulary of art criticism.
The point about these different views of the characteristics of picture books is that although they all have their limitations they are also all valid. Picture books are so wildly varied and diverse in format, style, subject matter and putative audience, so heterogeneous in their intertextuality, so eclectic in their reference to the structure and form of the novel and the short story, to painting and photography, to film and television and even in some cases to music and sculpture, that it is hardly surprising that they are also extraordinarily flexible and versatile in use. Thus they can legitimately be read and discussed as entertainment for babies, or as material for decoding practice, or as literary products, or as artistic compositions, or indeed in other ways. The genre is anything but self-contained and easily definable, as Lewis has pointed out: In short, the picture book is a bit of a tart, it'll go with anyone and occasionally doesn't mind a bit of cross-dressing. It's perfectly at homewith parody too - quite prepared to laugh at itself and at those genres which are a bit staid and set in their ways, like the traditional tale, the non-fiction Book and the reading scheme book. It's happy to pull faces when cartooning but is also capable of supreme feats of decorousness and sometimes profundity. (Lewis (1996) p. 6)
Plurality and ideology
For present purposes two of the most significant attributes of picture books need to be addressed. In neither case are they unique to the genre and thus cannot be seen in isolation as defining the form but both seem to be indispensable; necessary but not sufficient attributes. The first of these is the peculiar relationship between words and pictures; picture books are inescapably plural. Defining this hybrid relationship precisely is not easy, and different commentators (Lewis, 1996) have resorted to a variety of metaphors: derived from music (counterpoint), from craft (weaving), from literary theory (irony) and even from geology (tectonic plates). However, whatever imagery is seen as helpful, in all cases the reader has by some means to take account of what are certain to be separable impressions given the different media involved, and the act of reading a picture book requires him or her to focus on the gap between what the words appear to say and what the pictures appear to say. To read a picture book, then, is to engage in a highly creative process by which the reader attempts to reconcile an inevitable tension, to connect the ostensibly disconnected, to integrate the apparently discontinuous. Picture book authors, of course, play with this tension incessantly; they may intend to use the pictures or the words to consolidate or enhance, or to modify or reconstruct, or indeed to challenge or contradict, each other. In some cases the relationship may be left deliberately quite ambiguous and equivocal while in others it may be resolved by readers in a multiplicity of different ways.
The second important feature of picture books is that they are inherently ideological. In some ways the word is unfortunate since in common use it often implies disparagement but for present purposes it is used as a neutral term to refer to the network of beliefs, values and social practices which are explicitly espoused by or more often implicitly sustained within the text. In this sense all texts are ideological but especially texts intended for children. As Stephens has asserted: children's fiction belongs firmly within the domain of cultural practices which exist for the purpose of socializing their target audience. Childhood is seen as the crucial formative period in the life of a human being, the time for basic education about the nature of the world, how to live in it, how to relate to other people, what to believe, what and how to think - in general the intention is to render the world intelligible. Such ideas as these are neither essential or absolute in their constitution but are constructed within social practices, and the intelligibility which a society offers its children is a network of ideological positions, many of which are neither articulated nor recognized as being essentially ideological. (Stephens (1992) p. 8)
A good example of an ideological position taken within fiction for children and only relatively recently recognised is that of the pervasive sexism of stories in which patronising and patriarchal gender relationships are portrayed as normal and thus simply taken for granted. Such ideological assumptions were thoroughly explored some years ago in several studies, such as those of Dixon (1977) and Stones (1983), which provided detailed accounts of the prevalent and in such writers' views inappropriate sexist and sometimes racist implications of much children's literature, not only in the popular stories of authors like Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl but also in the work of much more highly regarded writers like Robert Westall, K.M. Peyton, Penelope Lively and Diana Wynne Jones. Similarly, Ursula Le Guin, quoted in Hunt (1994, p. 140), came to the conclusion that her acclaimed ‘Earthsea’ trilogy of novels for children was inherently sexist and wrote a fourth volume to try to redress the balance herself. In the case of sexism, then, a variety of social and cultural changes led to a fairly sudden awareness by some writers, readers and critics of what until then had been more or less unacknowledged.
The moral imperative
Given the heterogeneity of picture books, their ideological assumptions are similarly multiple and complex but certainly they very frequently incorporate the concept of childhood as a period of transition from infant egocentricity to adult maturity. Since this process is perceived as both significant and developmental many if not all picture books provide perspectives on ethical and moral issues which reflect the author's perception of value and his or her aspirations for the present and future nature of social life. For present purposes this may be called the moral imperative: that is, consciously or unconsciously, overtly or covertly, picture books provide through the combination of images and words, themes and ideas, texts and subtexts, a representation not only of how the world is, but of how it ought to be.
An obvious example is the type of picture book which can be seen as a vehicle for the explicit advocacy of moral precepts, as a means of prescribing specific advice to impressionable young readers. This has a long history and indeed the roots of children's fiction as a whole lie partly in the religious didacticism of the nineteenth century. Overt finger-wagging exhortation is perhaps rarer nowadays and in several recent picture books like Brown and Krensky's Perfect Pigs (1983) and Ross's Super Dooper Jezebel (1988) the moral perfection of a leading character is seen as sufficient reason for him or her to come to a sticky end, but didacticism still flourishes in the rather neglected area of picture
books which purport to provide sensible information and guidance to children about personal problems that they may face in their progress to adulthood: illness,disability, bereavement, physical and sexual abuse, family breakdown, bullying, and similar issues (Gooderham, 1993). The titles of a few typical books provide an accurate indication of their flavour: I Have Epilepsy (Althea, 1987); Topsy and Tim Have Itchy Heads (Adamson, 1996); We're Going to Have a Baby (De Saint Mars and Bloch, 1991); When Uncle Bob Died (Althea, 1982); Children Don't Divorce (Stones, 1991); We Can Say No! (Pithers and Greene, 1986); Living with Mum (Storrie, 1989). In passing it may be worth noting that if it is true that reading of any kind is above all an interactive process whereby the reader brings experience to, and in a sense negotiates with, the text, rather than one of passive and unquestioning absorption of whatever messages it contains, the faith of the authors of such books in the effectiveness of their sagacious (if somewhat relentlessly cheerful) advice may be misplaced.
Much more thoughtful and much more interesting are those picture books in which the appraisal of authentic and substantive issues is central but in which the moral imperative is to a greater extent implied or tacit rather than asserted. The range of concerns of such books includes the same individualistic and personal problems of family and peer relationships, but also encompasses questions of wider social and political interest such as race and gender, the environment and conservation, social and community conflict, war and peace, and even global interdependence. In relation to all such topics a range of picture books exist which provide not direct advice but a more subtle and sometimes provocative, yet often apparently naive and guileless, discourse.
The examples that follow are just that: examples, drawn from the publications of three of the best known, popular, and very prolific picture book makers currently working in Britain, namely David McKee, Michael Foreman, and Anthony Browne. There are many more who are equally distinguished, even if the work of authors from other English-speaking countries is excluded, let alone books published in other languages. However, even such a narrow focus can provide cases which exemplify my themes and arguments and since each of these authors has in different and idiosyncratic ways explored the boundaries of the picture book form they can also provide a flavour of the complex and sophisticated ways in which picture books function.
Problematic families
David McKee's Not Now Bernard (1980) is, at the simplest level, a story about a little boy who tries desperately but unavailingly to attract his parents' attention. Even when he is eaten by a monster in the garden, their only response is to repeat the words of the title: “‘But I'm a monster,’ said the monster. ‘Not now, Bernard,’ said Bernard's mother.” The text is simple and mantra-like in its repetition, and in the pictures the characters seem flat and two-dimensional within a bright, not to say garish, yet plain background, although highly significant details are included which function to link the pictures together. The overall effect is very funny: author and reader are engaged in a kind of conspiracy of mutual knowledge which excludes the parents. This simplicity and humour has led to substantial use of the book for early reading purposes with very young children (Moon, 1985) but it also raises issues which are rather more ambiguous. The behaviour of the parents as described in the pictures, especially after their son has seemingly been swallowed up by the monster, increasingly seems cold and aloof; but on the other hand the Bernard's conduct is at best tactless (always addressing his parents at awkward moments) and that of the monster reprehensible (biting Bernard's father's leg). The book thus has something to say about the ways in which families work or in this case apparently do not work. One group of 10-11 year olds, for example, concluded that the book illustrated the fact that mutual concern is the most important feature of the relationships between family members and not the possession or absence of material goods. As they put it, ‘caring's about loving them and stuff’ (Baddeley and Eddershaw, 1994, p. 45) and since Bernard although materially well provided for lacks love, thefamily is dysfunctional. An alternative but not necessarily contradictory account might point to the story as centred on the theme of power and powerlessness within family relationships. In such a reading the child Bernard attempts to assert his power, and succeeds in trivial ways, but the real control and authority in this (as in the reader's?) family is that of the adults: it is the mother who turns the light out at the end of the book (2).
The themes of McKee's Who's a Clever Baby Then? (1988) are not dissimilar. Here Baby is left in Grandma's charge (mother has rushed off looking harassed in the first picture and father is nowhere to be seen). Grandma's ingeniously alliterative but increasingly desperate attempts to elicit from Baby the names of the ten or eleven different animals they encounter is met by the stolid repetition of: “‘Dog,’ said Baby”. Finally they meet some dogs, to which Baby responds: “‘Cat,’ said Baby.” Once again, then, the theme is of the child's attempts to subvert the boundaries imposed by adults; intrinsic to Baby's responses are a recognition of the power of words, especially names, a refusal to play the game of language according to the rules devised by adults, and an assertion of an alternative interpretation of reality. The title of the book is thus ironic rather than patronising: this baby really is clever. In an indirect way the pictures also reinforce the theme carried by the words: the social settings in which Baby and Grandma are portrayed are anarchic and disorganised rather than safe, secure and reassuring: a motley array of characters are shown engaged within their own disconnected and seemingly bizarre stories and the disjunctive effect of these visual jokes is heightened by the partial replacement of normal rules of perspective with a more primitivist or child's-eye point of view. The pictures, then, as well as Baby's words, undermine Grandma's attempt to portray the world as regular, rule-bound, and predictable; there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in Grandma's philosophy (3).