ENG 470 Children's Visual Narratives - Ghost of the Talking Cricket: Susina on Literature

ENG 470: Studies in Literature of Young People

Children's Visual Narratives: Picture Books, Illustrated Books, Comics & Graphic Novels

Syllabus for Fall 2018 Course

Required Texts:

Perry Nodelman. Words about Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children’s Picture Books.
Nick Sousanis. Unflattening. Harvard UP.
Chip Kidd. Go: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design. Workman Publishing.
Heinrich Hoffmann. Struwwelpeter in English Translation. Dover.
Lewis Carroll. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass. Illustrated by John Tenniel. Ed. Hugh Haughton, Penguin.
Beatrix Potter. The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Warne.
Virginia Lee Burton. The Little House. HMH Books for Young Readers.
Margaret Wise Brown. Goodnight Moon. Illustrated by Clement Hurd. Harper Trophy.
Maurice Sendak. Where the Wild Things Are. Harper Trophy.
Dr. Seuss. The Cat in the Hat. Random House.
Elsa Holmelund Minark. Little Bear. Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. Harper Trophy.
Ezra Jack Keats. The Snowy Day. Puffin Books.
Faith Ringgold. Tar Beach. Dragonfly Books.
John Scieszka. The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. Illustrated by Land Smith. Puffin Books.
Art Spiegelman & Francoise Mouly. Eds. Big Fat Little Lit. Puffin Books.
Raina Telgemeier. Sisters. Graphix Scholastic.
Brian Selznick. The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Scholastic.
Lynda Barry. One Hundred Demons. Sasquatch Books.
Joseph Gibaldi. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. Eighth edition. MLA.

Sendak: Where the Wild Things Are

Nick Sousanis. Unflattening

Link to Sousanis website: Spin Weave and Cut. Link to "Frames of Thought" post

Hilary Chute's "Comics as Literature? Reading Graphic Narrative" JStor link and here's the .pdf of article

Charles Hatfield's "An Art of Tension" .pdf

Maps in Children's Books

Slap Happy Larry blog post on maps in children's literature
"From Middle Earth to Hundred Acre Wood: putting fiction on the Map" by Ciara Murphy in The Guardian
"Imaginary Maps in Literature & Beyond: Children's Stories" by Tim St. Onge at Library of Congress

Heinrich Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter

VCU comprehensive page with links on Struwwelpeter
Struwwelpeter museum, in German, but interesting!
Struwwelpeter with cool graphic designs and updated imagesfrom American artist Bob Staake. NPR interview by Liane Hansen of Staake about his Struwwelpeter. (April 9, 2006)
Animated version, in black-and-white, of The story of Little Suck-a Thumb.
Oompah Loompah's song about Augustus Gloop from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory film. remove dby YouTube
And just for fun, a Struwwelpeter quiz.

Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit

Frederick Warne's Beatrix Potter/Peter Rabbit site
"How Beatrix Potter invented character merchandising" from The Smithsonian.
William Moebius "Introduction to Picturebook Codes" Word & Image. April - June 1986

Lewis Carroll's Alice books

The British Library's virtual tour of the original manuscript of Alice's Adventures Under Ground. 1. Opening description with images only (not as interactive). . 2. Shockwave version so it's easy to turn pages. 3. A page with link to Silverlight version (most interactive)
Jan Susina's interview with Martin Gardener on Annotated Alice from Five Owls. (.pdf file)
Lewis Carroll Society of North America. Filled with links. Lewis Carroll home page, hosted by the LCSNA.
Lenny's Alice in Wonderland page. Good links to basic info on the book.
Victorian Website links on Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll's scrapbook from Library of Congress
Illustrations of Alice that are not by Tenniel
Florence Milner's 1903 essay explaining poems in Alice and original
Lesson Plan for teaching Alice in high school. From Discovery Channel
Alice near the jury box, as illustrated by John Tenniel
Pronouncing Liddell
Ruth Ann Zarnoff's interactive Alice site.
Tim Burton talks with Johnny Depp about Alice in Wonderland and Batman in LA Times (Oct. 15, 2008)
Blog on Walt Disney's Alice in Wonderland and pop culture related materials
Notes on Mary Blair's idea illustrations for Disney's Alice in Wonderland that have been reposition into an Alice book with text by Jon Scieszka
Penguin Books USA's reader's guide to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Middle school and high school level.
Cooper-Hewitt Museum video of page-by-page of Tony Sarg's Treasure Book. Video focuses on Alice in Wonderland and shows the pop-ups and details. YouTube. 1.5 min.
Trailer for 1999 television version of Alice in Wonderland. YouTube 1 min.
Unusual online text version with illustrations by many artists from many books. A Bedtime Story Classic
Link to information on Jan Susina's The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children's Literature

Virginia Lee Burton's The Little House

"Making Picture Books" Burton's talk in .pdf format
Link to Houghton Mifflin's office Mike Mulligan site
Link to podcast of interview of director and producer of documentary on Virginia Lee Burton (22 min
Link to website of documentary about Virginia Lee Burton, A Sense of Place (2008)
Link to catalogue of Virginia Lee Burton exhibit at the Eric Carle Museum of
Link to librarian Elizabeth Bird's blog about Virginia Lee Burton's The Little House. includes the Disney animated video (8 min) based on the book. Bird, writing on Publisher's Weekly site, is also fond of Mike Mulligan.
Photo is of Virginia Lee Burton in her studio in Cape Ann, Massachusetts

Margaret Wise Brown's Good Night Moon

Margaret Wise Brown informationMargaret Wise Brown

HarperCollin's 60th anniversary site for Good Night Moon

Link to every MW Brown book with illustrations & bibliographic info

YouTube related videos

Good Night Moon animated video with Susan Sarandon reading.
Goodnight iPad by Ann Droyd.
Samuel L. Jackson reading Go the F to Sleep. One minute introduction, then he begins with illustrations.

Clement HurdThe Little Island (under Golden MacDonald pen name). Illus.Leonard Weisgard

A few books by Margaret Wise Brown

Readings for October 2

Joe Sutliff Sanders. "Chaperoning Words: Meaning-Making in Comics and Picture books" from Children's Literature. Vol 41. 2013
Lawrence R. Sipe. "The Art of the Picturebook."
Virginia Lee Burton. "Making Picture Books" (Acceptance Paper 1943)

Dr. Seuss

"Picturebooks and Comics" article by Lara Saguisag (.pdf)
Snafu videos from World War II on YouTube

Private Snafu - Spies (1943)
Private Snafu Fighting Tools
Dr. Seuss book
Random House's website for Dr. Seuss
Dr. Seuss Goes to War. The Mandeville Collection
"The Political Dr. Seuss." a presentation on PBS' Independent Lens
Dr. Seuss National Memorial in Springfield, Massachusetts. History of Ted Geisel
Snopes message board with people commenting on Dr. Seuss' political cartoons
5000 Fingers of Dr. T film links
Promo video for 5,000 fingers of Dr. T (YouTube)
"Ten Little Fingers" song from 5,000 Fingers from Dr. T movie. (YouTube)37 sec. Catchy tune.
"Just Because We're Kids" song.from 5,000 Fingers. (YouTube) 1:52.
Climax of movie when kids revolt at pianos. from 5,000 Fingers
Opening to animated version of "The Cat in the Hat." version co-produced by Dr. Seuss. YouTube. 2:09 minutes
What it would sound like if Led Zepplin sang Dr. Seuss books. Mike Rayburn sings in this YouTube video. 1:04 seconds. Amusingly smart.

Little Bear by Else Minarik and Maurice Sendak

Sendak's fantasty sketches
"Birthday Soup" from Nickelodeon Little Bear show. YouTube. 7 min.
"I'm Going to the Moon" from Nickelodeon's Little Bear show. YouTube. 7:27 min.
HarperCollins site for Little Bear books. Brief biography on Else Minarik
New Hampshire Public Radio interview of Minarik from 2003. (Requires Windows Media player or Mac adapter for Quicktime.)
Links on book editor Ursula Nordstrom. Review of Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom by Rebecca Pepper Sinkler (New York Times March 22, 1998) Review of Dear Genius by Katherine Wolfe in Salon April 13, 1998. Hornbook's obituary of Nordstrom by Mary Stolz (1988)

Diversity in Children's Picture Books

Ezra Jack Keats' The Snowy Day

Ezra Jack Keats Foundation. Official website.
Ezra Jacket Keats virtual exhibit, from the deGrummond collection
Art Exhibition: The Snowy Day and the Art of Ezra Jack Keatsat The Jewish Museum in New York.
An article about the exhibit in The New York Times "Homage to a Picture Book Rebel" (12/8/11)
Overview video of the exhibit by The Jewish Museum. YouTube 4:28 min
The Snowy Day read aloud on YouTube
Biographical video on Keats on YT (3:36)
Nancy Larrick's essay "The All White World of Children's Books." This is a pdf document that links to a copy of Larrick's essay originally published in The Saturday Review, September 11, 1965.

Johanna Drucker

"Artists's Book and Picturebooks"

Faith Ringgold's Tar Beach

Faith Ringgold's website.
PBS website on Faith Ringgold. PBS Video interview with Ringgold
Ringgold talks about creating the Tar Beach quilt. YT. 3:49

Design Matters

article by Jon Scieszka

Chip Kidd's Kidd's GO: Guide to Graphic Design

Official website of Chip Kidd
Go: The book's Tumblr
Chip Kidd's TED talk
Inside Random House: "The Art of Cover Design" with Chip Kidd and numerous publishing people. YouTube
Book Cover Archive: Chip Kidd's book covers
"Chip Kidd: Start Making Sense" by Julie Lasky. Oct. 16, 2013. The New York Times. he talks about writing his graphic design book for kids
Q&A with Chip Kidd at Publisher's Weekly. Oct. 17, 2013.
Brain Pickings by Maria Popov analyzes Go: Kidd's Guide to Graphic Design.
Chip Kidd guests DJ playlist at KCRW

Charles Schulz and Peanuts

Perry Nodelman "Picturebook Guy Looking at Comics: Structural Differences in Two Kids of Visual Narratives." from The Lion and The Unicorn. 2012.

Art Spiegelman "Out of the Trash and into a Treasury."

official Charles Schulz website
Charles M. Schulz museum website
Play the Peanutizer game: which character are you?
Peanuts animation website, from MIT developer

YouTube videos on Schulz and Charlie Brown

American Masters: Good Ol' Charles Schulz: PBS. 3:18
"Charles Schulz Draws Charlie Brown" from an unreleased documentary.
Clip from A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1963)
Genesis of A Charlie Brown Christmas 3:20
Bill Melendez and Lee Mendelson on genesis of A Charlie Brown Christmas
Bill Melendez on animating A Charlie Brown Christmas 3:11
American Master's website for documentary on Schulz.
Video segment from 1985 documentary about Schulz, especially on animated specials. 6:31 on YTV
Video segment from American Master's documentary on Schulz creating Charlie Brown. 3:28 on YT
Author David Michaelis on Charles M. Schulz, creator of Peanuts. 4:36 video on YT,
Clip from 1963 documentary "A Boy Named Charlie Brown" 4:36 video on YT
Documentary: A Little Love: The Art of Bill Melendez. YouTube. 9:31 min

"Comic Art, Children's Literature and the New Comic Studies" by Charles Hatfield published in The Lion and the Unicorn vol. 30.3 (Sept. 2006): 360-382. link to pdf of essay

Little Lit

"A Mash Note to Crockett Johnson" by Dorothy Parker (.pdf).
Little Lit site of Art Spiegelman and Francois Mouly.
"Back to the Future" Time magazine article on Little Lit (2003).
"It was a dark and silly night" by Neil Gaiman and Gahan Wilson from Little Lit. Animated version (5 min).
"Comics for kids?" Review of Little Lit in January magazine by Claude Lalumière. Nov. 2000.