Art Appreciation: SLJ reviews new resource Picturing Books

New resource Picturing Books highlights children's book illustration

By Shonda Brisco -- School Library Journal, 11/1/2009

Even though I love children's picture books, I almost always cringe when a high school art student asks me to help them locate examples of titles that use "woodcuts" or "wash." While I handle these books on a daily basis, I admit that I'm not as familiar with the original media used or the style displayed within the pages of these mini museums. But recently, a new database has changed the way I view picture books and has helped me discover many that I never even knew existed.

Denise Matulkawww.picturingbooks.com/index.php

A demo of the database, which includes more than 2,000 titles, is available. Users must create an individual login in order to access the demo.

Grade K-12

Cost Subscriptions for K-12 schools start at $299 and are based on the number of schools within the district. For more information about the subscription rate for a specific district's size, go to bit.ly/8xbji. Subscriptions are also available for individuals, organizations, public libraries, and college and university libraries.

The Big Picture Picturing Books is the creation of Denise Matulka, author of A Picture Book Primer: Understanding and Using Picture Books (Libraries Unlimited, 2008). Based on this wonderful print volume on how picture books are illustrated and created, Matulka developed the database, which covers thousands of picture books from our past, as well as current favorites.

What is so unique about this database is that it provides not only the basic information about the book (author, title, publication date, publisher, summary, etc.), but detail about the artwork as well. Information ranging from the medium used by the illustrator (acrylic paints, for example) to the style of art (i.e. Expressionism) encourage users to examine each picture book found on their own library shelves as a significant piece of art worthy of thoughtful examination.

The unique elements of this database include:

• Bibliographic information for over 18,000 records

• Content searchable by fields specific to picture books, including artistic media and style, illustrator, author, designer, and format.

• The inclusion of international books, in addition to American titles, and out-of-print, unusual, and hard-to-find books.

Regardless of how familiar or unique the picture book might be, there's a good chance that Picturing Books has it listed.

Look and Feel This database provides an open-web feel by letting users browse the database demo before becoming completely engrossed with what else lies within the subscription content. From the home page, tinted in friendly hues of mint green and peach, users may begin searching for specific content or examine the resources listed in the left-hand panel.

The home page provides information about the database with a user poll on the right-hand banner and a directory of pages listed on the left. A News link provides picture book fans with updates, while an Interactive link offers a step-by-step (or page-by-page) description of a picture book's parts. This component alone is worth the hundreds of hours of work logged by librarians who have desperately tried to create PowerPoint versions of the parts of a book to share with their students and faculty.

Other items of interest include the Picture Book Timeline, which details the history of the genre from Orbis Pictus to the graphic novel (here's a sneak peak); the Art Elements found within a picture book (such as space, lines, texture, perspective, etc.); the Design Elements (such as symmetrical balance, movement, and rhythm); the Artistic Media used by the illustrator/artist (painting, drawing, photography, etc.); and the Artistic Style (such as abstract art, Expressionism, cartoon art, etc.). For those budding artists, writers, or librarians who are new to the profession and interested in learning more about picture books, an online glossary is also available. Each of these content areas could easily serve teachers and librarians, as well as art students, interested in an extended study of picture books beyond the elementary level.

Finally, a Links page provides a healthy list of author-illustrator Web pages. Among the individuals included: Jan Brett, Dav Pilkey, William Steig, Chris Van Allsburg, and more.

How it Works Picturing Books provides users with five search box options: title, author, illustrator, publisher, or keyword. In this case, keyword indicates that the search will include artistic media, artistic style, summary, and the notes field. Further limit your search by selecting genre, format, and date ranges from drop-down boxes listed on the search page.

I began with a search for "Randolph Caldecott." The results returned at least 20 different books written and illustrated by him, including the 1883 book A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go. A brief summary follows the title:

"An illustrated version of a traditional English folk song in which a frog sets out to court a mouse."

Following the summary are detailed Notes about the book's history, the publisher, and the art work. For example, in A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go, the notes state:

Randolph Caldecott's (1846–1886) picture books were published in pairs, two a year between 1879 and 1885. All were first published by Routledge. Later editions were published by Frederick Warne & Co. Caldecott worked in pen and ink on a smooth-surfaced paper. It was then photographed on wood, and engraved by Edmund Evans. The engravings were made from six color blocks, including a single outline in black that was printed on top. Their partnership produced seventeen picture books, the first being The Diverting Story of John Gilpin (1878). Together Caldecott and Evans perfected a method for producing an image of extremely delicate quality, thus preserving the artist's vision. Their efforts brought into English picture books great acclaim, ultimately setting the stage for today's picture books. (Picturing Books, 2009).

Additional information on the book includes any series, the ISBN, the OCLC number, the language in which the book is written, the designer, and the medium. By copying and pasting the OCLC number supplied in the results, students can use the World Cat widget available on the results page to search for the book in nearby libraries. Unfortunately, for me, the closest library that held this collectible was over 350 miles away. However, my search was focused on historical picture books.

Another search for Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are provided information about the book, the art work, and the awards received (in this case, the Caldecott Award in 1969). The search also provided subjects that allow the user to find other books under those particular categories (in this case, the subjects used were behavior and imagination).

By clicking on the subject term "behavior," a new page of results appears with additional picture books on that particular subject and include favorites such as: No, David! by David Shannon, A Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, and Bad Kitty by Nick Bruel, just to name a few. Once I searched for Bad Kitty by using the OCLC number in World Cat, I easily located the book in a library only a mile away.

In addition to being able to search for books in their local libraries, users over the age of 13 with an email address, can create their own World Cat user accounts, which will allow them to create lists of books, save links to their favorite libraries, save and write book reviews, and tag their favorite titles.

For Students and Teachers This database could easily become a unique addition to both the library and the art department for students in elementary through high school (and beyond). With Picturing Books, art teachers could explore the school library for unique works of art to share with students. For school librarians seeking ways to integrate information literacy skills into the art curriculum, Picturing Books lets you showcase some of the library's most influential pieces of art by providing hundreds of links to thousands of books that cover the history of children's literature.

For those new librarians (or those studying to become librarians), Picturing Books provides a wealth of information that exceeds the scope of any single text currently taught in most children's literature classes. With search results that provide information about the illustrator and the artwork in addition to the book's author, students of all ages can compare various styles found in children's picture books and develop a better understanding of art history, which has helped shape children's literature.

Report Card While Picturing Books provides truly unique content for picture book lovers and art enthusiasts, users will find some aspects of the database still lacking in development. For example, users cannot select specific titles from the results to develop their own list. Results cannot be printed, emailed, or saved for future access or use. In addition, information retrieved from the database does not provide citation information for use with research or reports.

While this database is still a fledgling that focuses on a topic often ignored by many in both the library and the art world, Picturing Books has the potential to become a mainstay in both the art department and the school library. For a great first effort in showcasing the brilliance of art within children's literature, Picturing Books deserves a B+.