Learning & Development: All about ... Picture books

It's very easy to take picture books for granted. After all, they're in every nursery, playgroup and reception class. If you walk into a bookshop or newsagent there are nearly always a few of them to buy. On children's television, there are still times when presenters and celebrities read from picture books while we see the pictures from the books displayed on the screen.

In fact, like many of the inventions we take for granted, the picture books we look at and read with our children have a fairly recent history. In the past, it used to be that only a very few privileged children ever got a glimpse of one. The one place where stories were told to everyone from every walk in life through big, lively, coloured pictures was on the walls of churches. But it would take several hundred years for this way of telling stories to reach into every child's hand in the form of a book. The route it took was through such things as little black-and-white pamphlets sold on the street (called chapbooks), followed by hand-tinted booklets of stories and rhymes sold mostly to middle-class children in the first decades of the 19th century.

Some of the first books that appeared which look anything like our picture books today came from the artist Randolph Caldecott in the later years of the 19th century. He had the idea of taking just one nursery rhyme and turning that into a whole book by illustrating each line, and even sometimes one word.

Three channels

So what is a picture book and how does it work? Picture books are ways of telling stories, jokes and poems through several 'channels' at the same time. The most obvious two channels are the pictures and the words, but if we look at exactly how the books are read, we can see that it's more complicated than that.

Take a typical reading situation: child sits on a parent's lap or on the carpet in front of a teacher and looks at the pictures and words while hearing the words spoken, chanted and sung. This means that we're talking about three channels - the sight of the pictures, the sight of the words and the sound of the words.

Because picture books have become so clever and so ingenious, each of these three channels may well be full of surprises and delightful complications. Let's take one of the most famous picture books of all time: Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak (Red Fox).

At first glance, people might say that this is really straightforward - there are words that 'tell the story' and there are pictures that illustrate the words. But is it really as simple as that?

Unexplained mysteries

For a start, there are plenty of occasions in the book where the pictures tell us all kinds of things that the words don't, or even pose all sorts of mysteries not explained by the words. An obvious example of this is that 'a forest' grows in Max's bedroom but it's not clear how the walls of the bedroom disappear. Interestingly, on the wall when Max is terrorising the dog, is a picture drawn by Max. It looks very much like one of the Wild Things we haven't met yet. What does this mean? That Max has already met the Wild Things before? Or that he's imagined them before? Or that they belong in his imagination? Any child reading this book several times (either being read to, or by sitting looking at it after the book has been read), will spot this picture and it will give the child pause for thought.

Conversely, we hear of Max's mother, but we don't see her and when, miraculously at the end, his supper is waiting for him - 'and it was still hot' - we have to surmise who could possibly have done that for him. Even more mysterious, after the great rumpus with the Wild Things, Max 'wanted to be where someone loved him best of all'. Who can this be? The last we heard of Max's mother was her calling Max 'Wild Thing' and sending him to bed 'without eating anything'. Without any prompting from me, as I read those words 'someone loved him best of all', my three-year-old (who can be quite a Wild Thing himself), piped up, 'Mummy!'

Somehow in the space left by Maurice Sendak - and it's a space left between the words and pictures - my little boy was able to articulate something very important about the story and indeed about his own life: that in the midst of his adventure with wildness, Max could expect unconditional love from his mother.

Wild rumpus

But let's consider another part of the book: the point at which Max cries, 'Let the wild rumpus start!' We turn over the page, and we meet a double-page spread of four Wild Things and Max dancing by the light of the moon, with their mouths wide open. We turn over and some different Wild Things, along with Max in what looks like broad daylight, are now dangling from trees - with their mouths shut.

Turn over the page again, and we now have five Wild Things who've appeared before, with Max riding one of them. They seem to be deep in a wooded area now, and a couple of them have mouths open and the one that Max is riding is looking at him with a mysterious, slightly menacing expression. Then, when we turn over the page, the first words we read are, '"Now stop!" Max said.'

The six pages of 'wild rumpus' (three double spreads) have been given to us without words. If we're parents, carers or teachers reading this book, what do we do as we turn these pages? Do we just turn them over quickly, as there's 'nothing to say'? I suggest that Sendak has invited us to make a 'wild rumpus'.

We can sing or jiggle or laugh or growl as we want. Almost certainly, children will ask us questions about who they are, do they have names, are they friendly or do they want to harm Max, and so on. The answer to these questions are that the children know as much or as little as we do. In other words, it's for any of us to fill in these details and ideas.

Look, speculate and wonder

It's difficult to spell out just how important all this is. The picture book format, so brilliantly developed by Maurice Sendak, isn't simply something that tells stories - it's something that invites a very young child to talk, look, speculate, wonder and come up with suggestions. When we think about what it means to educate or teach a very young child, it would be hard to imagine other activities that are any better at doing the job and sharing a book like Where the Wild Things Are.

And before we leave it, just one more point: most picture books that come out these days recognise that the book as a whole can invite the child's eye to scan and examine the pages. One of the ways designers and artists do this is by changing the layouts and textures of the pages. So, with this book, sometimes we read the text beside the picture, sometimes underneath it, and in the case of the last piece, 'and it was still hot', with no picture at all. Meanwhile, the pictures vary in size. Early on in the book, when Max is up to his mischief, the pictures are quite small, not filling the whole page. But as the emotional intensity and danger of the book grows, the pictures fill the whole page.

Not all picture books are as profound, or as intense or as brilliantly executed as Where the Wild Things Are, but nearly all of them will ask adults and children to engage in the kinds of processes that I've described.

In the boxes (right and on the previous page) are some others that may well invite those of you who read out loud to children to find rhythms, voices and expressions which will give extra pleasure to the children in your care, invite children to explore the variety and complexity of the pages with their eyes, and lead them into wonder and reflection at what lies between the words and pictures. I've chosen one title by the authors and illustrators but, of course, look out for their other books as well.

I'm afraid I didn't have room to mention such other great artists as Quentin Blake, Nick Butterworth, Michael Foreman, Anthony Browne, Emma Chichester-Clark, Lauren Child, Angela Barrett, Tony Ross, Polly Dunbar and writers of picture books such as Martin Waddell and Jeanne Willis and many more. Enjoy!

ROSEN'S FAVOURITES

The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler (Macmillan Children's Books). In the most perfect of rhymes and absorbing of pictures, Donaldson and Scheffler have created a child's saga. It's classic little-guy-versus-big-guy, other than that this little guy, the mouse, tricks four of his natural predators by way of tricking this giant ogre of a thing, the Gruffalo.

So Much by Trish Cooke and Helen Oxenbury (Walker Books). This is the life and times of a Caribbean family waiting for Daddy to come home for the party. It's told in a rhythmic way with just a touch of dialect, and the pictures fill the pages with action, expression, gesture and fun.

Dogger by Shirley Hughes (Red Fox). Is a book set in the streets and school of the inner city and which goes right to the heart of child-sized anxiety. Not content with giving us one level of tension - Dave's loss of a soft toy - Shirley Hughes makes it even more unbearable by showing us the toy being put on sale and then actually being sold to another child who, it turns out, doesn't want to give it back to Dave.

Not Now, Bernard by David McKee (Red Fox). Is a perfectly made, perfectly told little story that is full of questions and problems. Bernard is ignored so much by his parents, they don't hear him say that there's a monster who's going to eat him up, or notice that the monster does eat him, or even that the monster says that he's a monster. Are these the world's most insensitive parents, or are they a bit like your parents?

The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs by A Wolf by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith (Puffin Books). Is a book that brilliantly explores a story that isn't told between the covers of this book - that is, 'The Three Little Pigs'. So, it uses the knowledge that the child and adult readers already have to explore the idea of a put-upon wolf ... or is this just another one of his con-tricks?

Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg (Puffin Books). Is one of the most perfect picture books ever made. Using the shape of the little rhyme that invites us to 'spy' figures from the nursery rhyme world, we are invited to hunt for such characters at the edges of the pictures, only for them all to turn up together for a 'group shot' at the end.

The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr (HarperCollins Children's Books). Is one of the most bizarre books ever to have been made for young children, and yet it is told through the eyes of the most ordinary of people. The title says it all - a tiger arrives and eats and drinks everything except the child and her Mum - and then leaves. Dad seems a bit miffed when he gets in, but he suggests going out and having something to eat instead. Mum makes arrangements for the Tiger's next visit, but he never comes again. Who is this tiger? Are there any tigers who invade your house? The book is 40 years young this year, and it reminds us of how some picture books are beginning to take on the status of a folk tale.

The Opposite by Tom MacRae and Elena Odriozola (Andersen Press). Is a funny and intriguing story that will delight the more speculative of children. It's about a creature called 'The Opposite' who appears in your life in order to make you do the opposite of what you intend to do. Can he be defeated? Only if you can think of the opposite of an Opposite ... see what I mean about 'speculative'!

Ruby Sings the Blues by Niki Daly (Bloomsbury Publishing). Is about Ruby, who has the most terribly loud voice. It drives everyone mad until the teacher shows her how to turn the volume down, and two musicians who live in Ruby's apartment block teach her how to sing. This is a very liberating book.

MICHAEL ROSEN

Michael Rosen was born in Pinner, Middlesex, in 1946. His parents were teachers who later became university lecturers and together wrote a book entitled The Language of Primary School Children.

He started to train as a doctor but later switched to studying English Language and Literature while at Wadham College, Oxford. After graduating he worked as a BBC general trainee, working first in Radio Drama, then in Children's TV and Schools Television, before going on to study at the National Film School.

His first book of poems for children was published in 1974 and since 1976 he has worked as a journalist, performer, lecturer, broadcaster and writer, with more than 140 books to his name. His picture books include Snore!, Mustard, Custard, Grumble Belly and Gravy and, most famous of all, We're Going on a Bear Hunt.

Last June, Michael Rosen became children's laureate, which is awarded once every two years to an eminent writer or illustrator of children's books.

See: www.michaelrosen.co.uk.