Our second Community helper for I is Illustrator! We always read who a book is written by, but sometimes we skip the person who did the artwork. So I thought we would explore a few well known illustrators (who happen to be the authors as well) and see how the artwork adds to the book.
I chose Dr. Suess, Jan Brett, and Eric Carle as our author/ illustrators. I chose these three because their pictures are very different from one another and they are all enjoyed by my children.
Looking at the pictures in the books I asked the girls to describe the pictures. I guess we need to practice describing because they had a hard time coming up with words that would explain what they were seeing. In the end, this is what our lists looked like, and at the bottom of each list I wrote the feeling that the girls said they felt based on the pictures.
Then we talked about how if we took the very real looking fox out of The Mitten and stuck him in Fox in Socks it would change the entire book. How the book really wouldn't make much sense with nonsense words and real pictures. Likewise The Mitten would not be nearly as good with a cartoony fox and other animals. Instead it would just be silly.
We also talked about how Eric Carle's pictures are made with paint and tissue paper rather then being drawn like most other illustrators.
So we learned illustrations enhance the stories they are made for, and illustrations can be done in many different mediums. Hopefully we will remember to look at our illustrator more often.
