Screams and Smiles: On Some Possible Human Universals in Children's Book Illustration

Abstract

International children's illustration shows, Jeffrey Garrett suggests here, a substrate of universal human expression – and a universal tendency to mask that expression. Then there are culture-specific elements that may or may not cross the communications divide. When they don't, they are replaced by meanings provided by our native storytelling ability – and children remake and transform stories differently from how adults do it