El álbum ilustrado en Nicaragua

Reviewed by: Brown Gold: Milestones of African-American Children’s Picture Books, 1845–2002 Violet J. Harris (bio) Michelle H. Martin . Brown Gold: Milestones of African-American Children’s Picture Books, 1845–2002. New York: Routledge, 2004. Literary criticism about African-American literature reflects certain traditions. One tradition entails the emergence of young scholars who offer provocative ideas that contradict some prevailing beliefs about the literature, its creators, publishers, and audience. Famously, some writers and artists associated with the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston, and Bruce Nugent, for example, announced their rejection of the conservative cultural aesthetics of their elders, principally W. E. B. DuBois and Charles Johnson (editors of The Crisis Magazine and Opportunity, respectively) who fought against Sambo-like imagery in art, music, and literature in low and highbrow manifestations. The younger artists voiced a desire to bring into existence a "new Negro," hoping to depict the Negro in all of his/her complexity. Variations of this tradition are evident throughout the twentieth century. Literary debates in the 1960s and 1970s centered on the Black Arts Movement and those in the 1980s and 1990s pitted advocates of cultural critiques against those who supported postmodernist theories as seen in the articles published by Henry L. Gates, Jr., Houston Baker, and Joyce A. Joyce in New Literary History. Some comparable debates are evident in children's literature, for instance, Exploring Culturally Diverse Literature for Children and Adolescents (Henderson and May, 2005) and Stories Matter (Fox and Short, 2003). Michelle Martin contributes to this tradition with a, perhaps deliberately, provocative volume that argues, among other things, that African-American children's picture books really emerged with Heinrich Hoffman's tale, "The Story of the Inky Boys" in Struwwelpeter and Helen Bannerman's The Story of Little Black Sambo. I can appreciate intellectual ideas that transgress and interrogate selective traditions, ideas, and beliefs; however, I also value documented research and arguments that delineate the social and cultural milieu that shaped the traditions, ideas, and beliefs being challenged as well as documentation of the same for oppositional ideas and beliefs. Martin is provocative and succeeds in offering some new ideas, but she is not entirely convincing in her support for her more controversial pronouncements. In the introduction to Brown Gold, Martin identifies her major theses, and the text itself contains three sections with nine chapters, divided into notes and a bibliography. Section one presents an overview of the history of African-American children's picture books. The focus of section two is the professional evolution of African-American children's picture books. The last section identifies some of the criticism and pedagogy associated with African-American children's picture books. [End Page 274] Martin, in her first chapter boldly asserts that the beginning of African-American children's picture books can be traced to a story not written by an African American nor that is indeed even an American story: namely Hoffman's "The Story of the Inky Boys," is the beginning of African-American children's picture books. Now Martin acknowledges that some materials, principally antislavery tracts, depicted African Americans in a humane fashion but she does not consider antislavery tracts a part of African-American children's literature. Similarly, Martin argues that The Story of Little Black Sambo is one of the first examples of children's literature that depicts Black characters as intelligent, with a sense of agency, and human. Related to these assertions is the belief that many books, especially those written by well-intentioned Whites, can be considered African-American children's literature. This is bound to be a controversial point of view. I assert that one can identify African-American children's literature as literature created by African Americans (individuals of African descent). Further, I would argue that those who are not of African descent and who create works that feature African Americans do not create African-American literature in the way that Wole Soyinka would not be considered a Russian writer simply because he includes a Russian character in a novel set in Nigeria. Of course, terminology is further complicated by biracial authors and illustrators who must self-identify in a manner...

Eva Billow as picture book artist and graphic designer. The 1940’s and 50’s was a dynamic period for the Nordic picture book. There is a general aspiration to explore picture book aesthetics, a need to find imagery and expressions capturing a new era. In my article, I will discuss how these ideas are expressed in the illustrator and graphic artist Eva Billow’s picture books. Her illustration style is originated in a modernist tradition of simplicity, clarity and typographic precision. Also, an idea about books as an art form is evident through her production. Eva Billow’s production covers a wide field of graphic design, from picture books, cartoons and illustrations to book art, posters and advertisements. I will discuss Billow’s use of aesthetics that can be related to functionalist ideas and will further place this approach in a larger context in the history of Swedish graphic design. The general interest in graphic design and new printing techniques among picture book illustrators can also be seen as a part of a tendency within Nordic Modernism where the artist aspired to make arts a part of the society. But the appeal for the picture book among the young Nordic artists and authors, prior and after the Second World War, also expresses an inter-artistic tendency, where the limits between different forms of art are explored. Keywords: picturebook, graphic design, functionalism, modernism, illustration history, literary criticism

Eva Billow as picture book artist and graphic designer. The 1940’s and 50’s was a dynamic period for the Nordic picture book. There is a general aspiration to explore picture book aesthetics, a need to find imagery and expressions capturing a new era. In my article, I will discuss how these ideas are expressed in the illustrator and graphic artist Eva Billow’s picture books. Her illustration style is originated in a modernist tradition of simplicity, clarity and typographic precision. Also, an idea about books as an art form is evident through her production. Eva Billow’s production covers a wide field of graphic design, from picture books, cartoons and illustrations to book art, posters and advertisements. I will discuss Billow’s use of aesthetics that can be related to functionalist ideas and will further place this approach in a larger context in the history of Swedish graphic design. The general interest in graphic design and new printing techniques among picture book illustrators can also be seen as a part of a tendency within Nordic Modernism where the artist aspired to make arts a part of the society. But the appeal for the picture book among the young Nordic artists and authors, prior and after the Second World War, also expresses an inter-artistic tendency, where the limits between different forms of art are explored. Keywords: picturebook, graphic design, functionalism, modernism, illustration history, literary criticism

Picture book texts can affect readers by not only providing the joy of reading, but by projecting the artist's beliefs and vision of life. The worldview approach to texts requires multidisciplinary and integrative research that goes beyond aesthetic and ideological approaches revealing how the text answers fundamental questions about the world and life. The purpose of this study was to present an example of a worldview approach to picture books by criticizing John Klassen 's <Hats Trilogy>, which won the Caldecott Medal in 2013 and several picture book awards. For this study, Vanhouser (2009) 's hermeneutic realism and 'thick description' were used as the premise of interpretation. Moreover, and the theoretical system and methodology in the field of theology, hermeneutics, literary criticism, picture book aesthetics and reading education were used. Through 'elementary reading', 'inspectional reading', and 'analytical reading' about the <Hats Trilogy>, the following questions were answered: 1) what is this world? 2) what are human beings? and 3) what should human beings do? As a result, a 'nihilism' worldview projected by the trilogy was discussed. The significance of this study is in the concrete discussion and practice of the worldview approach to picture book criticism. Furthermore, this study suggests that it is necessary to reflect the nature and vision of picture books for young readers.

Reviewed by: Picturebooks: Beyond the Borders of Art, Narrative and Culture ed. by Evelyn Arizpe, Maureen Farrell, and Julie McAdam, and: Reading Visual Narratives: Image Analysis of Children’s Picture Books by Clare Painter, J. R. Martin and Len Unsworth Karen Coats (bio) Picturebooks: Beyond the Borders of Art, Narrative and Culture, edited by Evelyn Arizpe, Maureen Farrell, and Julie McAdam. London: Routledge, 2013. Reading Visual Narratives: Image Analysis of Children’s Picture Books, by Clare Painter, J. R. Martin, and Len Unsworth. Sheffield, UK: Equinox Publishing, 2013. Picture books—books intended for young children which communicate information or tell stories through a series of many pictures combined with relatively slight texts or no texts at all—are unlike any other form of verbal or visual art. Both the pictures and the texts in these books are different from and communicate differently from pictures and texts in other circumstances. (Nodelman vii) With this assertion in his 1988 publication of Words About Pictures, Perry Nodelman began the first and in many respects still standard work of literary criticism aimed at the picture book as a distinctive art form. By that time, the study of children’s literature as something other and more than an educational tool of dubious literary and cultural interest and value had enjoyed just over a decade and a half of institutional recognition (measured by the creation of the Children’s Literature Association and the launch of its journal in 1973). However, there was as yet no analytical framework for considering how picture books actually do their communicative work. The available tools for considering images were based on the aesthetics of gallery art, not the complex and varied interactions of words and pictures deployed in the process of storytelling. Nodelman’s work broke new ground in teaching us how to see the various elements of picture book art and design, and opened a dialogue that has grown in critical sophistication and scope in tandem with the form itself. Since the appearance of Nodelman’s book, the criticism of picture books has both deepened with respect to explorations of what constitutes a picture book—including the very terminology we use to designate the form and its features—and broadened to include insights and critical apparatus adapted from other areas of inquiry, such as cultural geography, cognitive studies, visual literacy, philosophy, and semiotics. This review looks at two books that represent the exciting and dynamic [End Page 305] state of the evolving critical dialogue of picture book research. The first, Picturebooks: Beyond the Borders of Art, Narrative and Culture, is part of a Routledge series of edited collections of essays that include New Directions in Picturebook Research (2012) and Picturebooks: Representation and Narration (2013). The essays and articles in these books originated from conference papers; the ones in the collection under review were presented at a 2009 conference at the University of Glasgow, Beyond Borders: Art, Narrative and Culture in Picturebooks, the second in an ongoing biannual series entitled New Impulses in Picturebook Research. Subsequent conferences have been held in Turbingen in 2011, and Stockholm in 2013, with edited collections forthcoming from those conferences as well.1 The present collection also includes two papers from the early stages of a separate but related international research project, Visual Journeys, which aims to study immigrant and nonimmigrant children’s responses to wordless picture books; the book from that project, Visual Journeys through Wordless Narratives: An international inquiry with immigrant children and The Arrival, will be published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Academic. The three editors, Evelyn Arizpe, Maureen Farrell, and Julie McAdam, all of the University of Glasgow, form part of the Visual Journeys research team, which also includes partners from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, the Australian Catholic University, and the University of Texas at Austin. The articles in this collection first appeared in a special issue of the New Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship; that Routledge considered it a profitable venture to reprint them in book form testifies in a material way to the status of and demand for this type of research, as does the conference series itself. Unfortunately, the production quality of the book is variable...

This article uses psychoanalytic theory to look at a range of contemporary picture books, and argues that picture books allow child readers an opportunity to engage with their own primitive anxieties. It begins with a brief look at the history of children’s literature, arguing that the genre has developed to allow for increasingly complex representations of children’s internal worlds. Alongside this, it considers the value and application of psychoanalytic theory to literary criticism in order to contextualise its own approach to the books it later looks at. The article focuses in on picture books as a specific genre within children’s literature and uses Maurice Sendak’s picture book In the night kitchen to outline some of the key characteristics that make picture books especially suited to the articulation of primitive anxieties in ways that child readers can engage with and take ownership of. The second part of the article examines a number of contemporary picture books, analysing them in terms of their unconscious content in order to demonstrate the ways in which psychoanalytic ideas can be usefully applied to such texts.

Reading postmodern texts certainly situates readers in roles different from the ones we have been used to. Recently, postmodern metafiction forms a significant body of children`s literature that is intended to challenge and transform the conventions of books in the digital age. While many studies have been done as to how child readers have capabilities to appreciate and interpret postmodern metafiction picture books, few studies on teachers and preservice teachers` reactions are not readily available. The role of teachers and preservice teachers are crucial for child readers to have access to affluent reading resources. This study discusses how preservice teachers read and respond to postmodern metafiction picture books using a deconstructive approach by means of binary opposites. Data was collected with 14 preservice teachers as to their likes/dislikes, reading levels, and reading paths about postmodern metafiction picture books. Expected pedagogical implications for literacy and language education were requested to address in their reading diaries and response papers. With their likes/ dislikes, since binary opposites always imply the hierarchy of power and value, the likes is apparently more valued and appreciated over their dislikes. This differentiated values are discussed in more detail with three recurring themes-Education, Morals and Behavior, and Tradition. With reading levels, there seems to be a gap existing between the authors` implied reader and literary critics` and the preservice teachers` ideal readers for the postmodern metafiction picture books. Although many studies have already revealed young readers` capability of appreciating postmodern metafiction, it depends a lot more on the teachers and preservice teachers whether children`s right to have access to affluent literacy resources is respected or not. Preservice teachers` awareness of the potential of postmodern metafiction will work as an initial step to bring and realize the new reading path and new literacies in classrooms. By challenging metanarratives of children`s literature, preservice teachers` readings of postmodern picture books reveals potentials to raise different reading paths and develop new literacies and other educational implications.

This article analyses a specific number of picture book reviews on prize-winning Norwegian picture books from 1998-2008. The subject for the analysis is to examine what kind of aesthetic thinking that is expressed in the reviewer’s judgement of the book. I found that it was possible to relate the reviews to two well established concepts in classic aesthetic theory, namely the concept of the beauty and the sublime. To illustrate this I have studied more exhaustive a smaller number of reviews on two different books.Keywords: picture books, literary criticism, aesthetic theory, the beauty, the sublime

Directions in Research Marilyn Cochran Smith The Parent-Diary as a Research Tool For many years literary critics, librarians and educators alike have applauded the wise parent who provides for his child a "literate environment," that is, an environment in which books, stories and other printed materials surround the child and introduce him early to the literary world. Despite the enthusiastic and undoubtedly sincere conviction of many of those in the children's literature community, that books can play a vital role in the lives of young children, we know surprisingly little about the nature of children's experiences with literature. Indeed until rather recently the paucity of writings on the topic in children's literature publications, especially American publications, has indicated little interest in the area. Several recent contributions to publications in the field, however, begin to indicate that lack of interest in children's literary experiences may no longer be the case. Exeter University's Fourth Symposium of the International Research Society for Children's Literature, for example, featured papers around the topic, "responses to literature," three of which were reprinted in Children's Literature in Education [see Agnia Barto, "Children's Responses to Illustrations of Poetry." CLE. 10:1 (Spring 1979), pp. 11-17; Michael Benton "Children's Responses to Stories." CLE. 10:2 (Summer 1979), pp. 68-85; and Reinbert Tabbert, "The Impact of Children's Books: Cases and Concepts (Parts I and II)." CLE. 10:2 and 10:3. (Summer and Autumn 1979), pp. 92-102 and 144-149]. Hugh and Maureen Crago continue to publish excerpts from their carefully recorded longitudinal account of daughter Anna's literary experiences and responses in a home setting [see Maureen Crago, "Incompletely Shown Objects in Picture Books: One Child's Respone." CLE. 10:3 (Autumn 1979), pp. 151-157 and "'Snow White': One Child's Response in a Natural Setting." Signal. 31 (January 198), pp. 42-56 for two of their most recent articles]. A special section of the Children's Literature Association Quarterly, guest-edited by Peggy Whalen-Levitt, featured five articles on various theoretical and empirical aspects of the topic, "literature and child readers" [see ChLAQ. (Winter 1980), pp. 9-28]. Last spring Dorothy Butler's Cushla and Her Books, a moving account of Butler's handicapped granddaughter and the impact that picture books had on her earliest years, was published in this country and is currently being enthusiastically reviewed and received [see Dorothy Butler, Cushla and Her Books. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975, 1979 and Boston: Horn Book, Inc., 1980]. Finally, Janet Hickman's long-term observational study of the ways children respond to stories in the context of school settings was recently excerpted in Language Arts [see Janet Hickman, "Children's Responses to Literature: What Happens in the Classroom," LA. (May 1980), pp. 524-529]. These examples may signal a growing scholarly interest in children's literary experiences, or at least a growing recognition that questions related to this area are worthy of exploration. I would like to argue here, as has been argued previously,1 that explorations of this sort need to be carried out over time and within the contexts in which they naturally occur—in homes, schools, church schools, libraries, summer camps—by researchers who are both participants in, and observers of children's literary experiences. The rationale for such an approach has its roots in anthropology, in the view that human behavior of any sort (including listening and responding to stories) can best be understood in context—not because context influences behavior or the meaning of behavior, but because the meaning of 'human' is embedded within cultural and social context. Hence investigators who [End Page 3] omit consideration of natural context —by inventing artificial contexts or by attempting to isolate certain behaviors from their natural contexts —drastically impoverish the understanding they can proffer. Parents interested in chronicling their own children's literary experiences would seem to have the opportunity for just this sort of context-oriented study, and yet the majority of parent accounts to date2 have seemed somehow incomplete and more anecdotal than explanatory. This is not to suggest that readers of parent accounts have not been moved...

The first study from the perspective of Deaf culture of a deaf child in a picture book, this chapter points to an absence from the critical literature about multicultural children’s books of attention to deaf people who consider themselves members of a cultural minority. Deaf children are rarely characters in picture books and when they do appear they tend to be positioned as members of a disability group rather than of a culturally affiliated group. It is argued that Mandy (1991) reinforces stereotypes about Deaf people and confirms a mainstream view that deafness is undesirable. While Mandy is represented as a visual person, she is portrayed as obsessed with sound, which is contradictory to how members of a Deaf culture might depict themselves. Instead, readers are positioned to accept the rightness of Mandy’s attempts to assimilate into the mold imposed by a hearing society.

The Journey Through the "Space in the Text" to Where the Wild Things Are by Ann Moseley Though Northrop Frye's assertion that the quest is the "central myth of literature" (18) is debatable, certainly many of the best works of children's literature—from Grimms' folktales to realistic novels such as Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia to fantasies by Tolkien, Cooper, and LeGuin to modern picture books by Maurice Sendak—have employed the quest, or journey, motif. The quest myth represented in Max's imaginary journey is indeed central to Where the Wild Things Are, but equally important to this now classic picture book is how Sendak expands Max's quest both spatially and temporally. Traditionally, the plot of Where the Wild Things Are would have been seen as time-oriented and the illustrations as space-oriented, but the theories of Joseph Frank, Rudolf Arnheim, and E. H. Gombrich about the integral and complex relationships between space and time and the application of these theories by literary critics such as Sharon Spence, Eric S. Rabkin, W. J. T. Mitchell, and others now allow us to view both text and illustration more fluidly, for the interdependence of word and picture is paralleled by the interdependence of time and space. One of the earliest theorist/critics to recognize the importance of spatial form to literature was Joseph Frank, who observed as early as 1945 that modern literature as well as modern art was "moving in the direct of spatial form" (57). Sendak himself has emphasized the importance of both space and time in his work, asserting that "You must leave a space in the text so the picture can do the work. Then you must come back with the word and the word does its best, and now the picture beats time" (Lorraine 326). In contrast to standard expectations, then, Sendak associates the traditionally spatial form of the picture with time and the traditionally temporal, or narrative, text with space. The resultant use of spatial and temporal forms in Where the Wild Things Are is indeed complex, existing on at least four levels: textual, physical, psychological, and mythic. Perhaps the most obvious textual characteristic of Where the Wild Things Are is Sendak's use of white space—decreasing in the first half of the book and increasing in the second half. Sutherland has observed this fact, noting that the "drawings get larger and larger" (13), and Géraldine DeLuca has commented on "the gray confining space of the house opening up, as the borders disappear. . ." (14). Perhaps the most detailed description of this spatial phenomenon, however, is that of Townsend, who states: As the story opens out from the confines of Max's home to the fantasy world he is creating for himself, the pictures expand. From post card size with broad white surround, they grow to near-page, full-page, page-and-a-bit; then the "wild rumpus" fills three great wordless double-page spreads; and in the return journey everything gradually closes in again. (313) Thus, the text itself—the way in which white space, print, and illustration appear on the page— is a basic spatial construct of the work, with the relationship between white space and illustration serving as the key to physical reality on the one hand and imaginative, or psychic and mythic realities, on the other. The white space itself comes to represent the real world, perhaps suggesting its vacuity when compared with the depths of psyche and myth, for the white space is most overpowering at the beginning and the end of the book when Max is most absorbed in the sensual realities of playing and eating. Moreover, the white space itself completely disappears in the three double-spread pages that appear at the climax of Max's imaginary journey. These spatial aspects of the literal text are paralleled by the temporal, for as Mitchell has observed, "We cannot experience a spatial form except in time" (544). That is, though the spatial form exists of itself, it is perceived by the observer only in time. And indeed, the 96 child or adult who "reads" Where the Wild Things Are will spend as much or more...

From nursery rhymes to epic fantasy, from picture books to challenging novels for adolescents, reading is a crucial activity in the cultural and psychological formation of children. In The Oxford Companion to Australian Children's Literature, Stella Lees and Pamela Macintyre examine the legacy and contemporary achievement of Australian children's writers. This encyclopaedic reference work covers the earliest writings from the nineteenth century to the remarkable growth in publishing that followed the Second World War. The Companion encompasses the most notable and influential nursery rhymes, illustrations, picture books, novels and Aboriginal stories. Arranged alphabetically, 1600 entries cover authors, publishers, illustrators, famous characters, events, institutions, and awards - from Ned Kelly and the Eureka Stockade to Australian Comics and the work of Evelyn Goode. Longer, essay-length articles examine the nature and importance of key features of Australian children's literature - annuals, animal stories, the Bush, literary criticism, and fairy tales. 'An indispensable work of reference which is also a pleasure to read'. Brenda Niall

This article analyses a specifi c number of picture book reviews on prize-winning Norwegian picture books from 1998–2008. The subject for the analysis is to examine what kind of aesthetic thinking that is expressed in the reviewer’s judgement of the book. I found that it was possible to relate the reviews to two well established concepts in classic aesthetic theory, namely the concept of the beauty and the sublime. To illustrate this I have studied more exhaustive a smaller number of reviews on two different books. Keywords: picturebooks, literary criticism, aesthetic theory, the beauty, the sublime (Published: 3 March 2011) Citation: Nordic Journal of ChildLit Aesthetics, Vol. 2 , 2011 DOI: 10.3402/ blft.v2i0.5833 Note: This article is being published simultaneously in Barnboken – tidskrift for barnlitteraturforskning/Journal of Children’s Literature Research and Nordic ChildLit Aesthetics/Barnelitteraert forskningstidsskrift

Why Bettelheim?A Comment on the Use of Psychological Theories in Criticism Michael Steig (bio) As an erstwhile psychoanalytic critic, I am increasingly skeptical about the uncritical use of psychological grids in literary interpretation. Bruno Bettelheim's Uses of Enchantment in particular often seems to be taken as Truth rather than as the views of one psychiatrist holding one set of values. Accepting Bettelheim's basic model of the use of fairy tales by children to externalize and (in fantasy) resolve their unconscious conflicts and anxieties is one thing—though even that model can be questioned; accepting his moralizing tendencies is something else. Thus, although I find "Unlocked by Love" a very insightful discussion of the particular appeal of four of William Steig's picture books with child protagonists, I must express some concern about the way in which Bettelheim is used. Arlene Wilner's suggestion that William Steig's Sylvester is transformed into a rock as a punishment seems to derive from Bettelheimian assumptions about misconduct and justice in stories for children. Or does she assume that all calamities in children's stories are viewed by child readers as punishments? In either case, we are distanced from the experience of reading when the critic fails to describe her own relation to either the theory or the interpretation. There is nothing new in the unquestioning acceptance and application [End Page 125] of psychological precepts: literary critics have been doing it for years, whether the source of undisputed wisdom is Freud, Jung, Bettelheim, or Lacan. (A recent example: Michael Reed's piece in the Children's Literature Association Quarterly, 11, on the female Oedipus complex in Outside Over There—an interesting article that nonetheless gives no sense of the author's basis for accepting Freud's theories.) The special problem with Bettelheim (also true of Freud to an extent) is that his supposedly scientific view of child development is fraught with values that can be called political and moralistic, a fixed set of ideas about how children should develop. "Unlocked by Love" does communicate some sense of the author's feelings about the appeal of the stories by William Steig, and no doubt Bettelheim's basic model was a necessary starting point for the article. But this critic and all too many others keep the works they interpret at a distance by choosing to apply "well-accepted" views of child development without considering that any theory of a universal pattern of development is open to serious doubts—if only by the fact that it claims universality. What I am suggesting is that the criticism of children's literature needs greater awareness both of the possible weaknesses in particular psychological theories and of the processes of reading and interpretation. [End Page 126] Michael Steig Michael Steig teaches at Simon Fraser University. He is the author of Dickens and Phiz (1978) and Stories of Reading: Subjectivity and Literary Understanding (1989). Copyright © 1990 The Children's Literature Foundation, Inc.

A Child with Much to Teach Nina Mikkelsen (bio) Crago, Maureen and Hugh . Prelude to Literacy: A Preschool Child's Encounter with Picture and Story. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983. In trying to understand how children interact with text and picture, critics often question whether children read differently from adults. In their study of the child's responses to stories, Maureen and Hugh Crago, practicing psychotherapists as well as literary critics, reach some conclusions about this subject as they examine a broader question: how do very young children respond to the books they see and hear? In particular, how do children develop mastery of literary and artistic conventions? In this case the child is Anna, the Crago's daughter, who between the age of twelve months and five years responded primarily to fantasy in picture book and chapterbook for the diary her parents maintained. The Crago study is different from two parent diaries that preceded it. Both Dorothy White's Books Before Five (1954; rpt. Heinemann 1984), which the Cragos say served them as a model, and Dorothy Butler's Cushla and Her Books (Hodder and Stoughton, 1979), are divided in focus between evaluative description of books and a child's response to them, and coverage of each area is therefore reduced. As well as providing evaluations, White and Butler are less systematic about making generalizations about the child's responses; the Cragos conclude each chapter with analysis of Anna's responses. And the Cragos seem to be more consciously aware than their predecessors of the part they themselves play as mediators of the child's literary experience; they carefully note each time they feel their behavior might have been a conditioning factor in the highly interactive process of book-sharing (as when they read, with highly dramatized voices, passages that Anna later memorizes or often quotes). The Cragos provide a more comprehensive account of Anna's response to books than either White or Butler. Part One of their book includes Anna's copious responses (impromptu comments and questions) to six books, each for a different six month period. [End Page 153] Anna's earliest response to books (1.8 to 1.11) is important for revealing from the outset behavior consistently seen throughout the period of the study and often exhibited as well by adult readers: the ability to identify objects and creatures from her own conceptual base, to ask for clarification (through look or sound) of what is puzzling, to memorize text, to make statements of interpretation about a character's behavior, to concentrate silently on certain pictures and thus reveal interest and focus, to imitate adult reading behavior, and to transfer book concepts to actions she herself performs. Response to Where the Wild Things Are (2.1 to 2.6) is important in that Anna was interpreting a character's feelings when she described Max as "frightened," as well as asking questions about what she could not see in illustrations. She was processing, out of her own experiences, new concepts that emerged in pictures (calling Max's scepter first a "football," then a "walking stick," finally a "broom"). And she was attending to pictures according to their sequence, rather than focussing on personal preoccupations (a behavior not always typical for her, but indicating a similar capability to that of the adult). Anna's response to a picturebook version of "Rapunzel" (between 3 and 3.5) reveals her assimilation of new ideas to old experiences, with comments and questions about houses and towers reflecting earlier anxieties about closed doors. Thus cognitive and affective responses were not separate; instead the cognitive statement often indicated the underlying emotion. Reading of Hugh Lofting's The Story of Doctor Dolittle (3.11 to 4.5) showed that a child's thin level of verbal response could work positively to reveal what her perceptions were. When Anna concentrated on the earlier parts of the book and then made frequent reference to the character of the Barbary Pirates, who appeared later in the story, she revealed a grasp of what the authors call a "basic binary structure," in which a familiar character or creature, after leaving a familiar place, encounters an unfamiliar...