handwritten text with firmly contoured sturdy, black and white drawings. Feodor
Rojankovsky, a Russian émigré, moved from Paris where he had illustrated calendars
and wild animal stories for Père Castor books, to America in 1941. There he made more
exuberant and dramatic picture books of his own like The Tall Book of Mother Goose
(1942) and The Three Bears (1948). Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire, with The Magic Ring
(1931) established their chosen medium, stone lithographs, as a brilliant new way of
getting colour into picture books, a process which involved them in doing their own
separations, and which gave the finished work a hand drawn look. Roger Duvoisin in
Donkey-Donkey (1933), first displayed his gift for animal characters whose looks clearly
express feelings, and which finds its ultimate expression later in tales of a misguided
goose, Petunia (1950) and in The Happy Lion (1954). Jean Charlot introduced sculptural
forms and Mexican imagery in The Sun, the Moon and a Rabbit (1935), whilst Boris
Artzybasheff, a linearist, made a Russian narrative spectacle of a picture book with
Seven Simeons (1937).
After the Second World War there was a gradual refinement in offset lithography, and
by the late 1950s the full possibilities of how the technology might serve in the
development of picture books with more painterly qualities were realised, in Britain,
through the vision and enterprise of the children’s book editor for the Oxford University
Press. Mabel George commissioned Brian Wildsmith, a daring colourist, to paint plates
for an edition of the Arabian Nights, and then sent them to an Austrian fine-art printer
for reproduction. The results led her to launch what has come to be seen as a marker
for the modern picture book: Wildsmith’s ABC (1962). Other artists whom she
commissioned included Victor Ambrus and Charles Keeping.
Over the years an increasing number of awards for children’s books and book
illustration have been instituted which acknowledge talents, raise public awareness, and
increase sales: awards include the American Library Association’s Randolph Caldecott
Medal (instituted in 1938), the British Library Association’s Kate Greenaway Medal
(1955), the Hans Christian Andersen Award (1966) given by the International Board on
Books for Young People to an illustrator in recognition of an entire body of work, and the
Australian Children’s Picture Book of the Year Award; prizes are awarded at the
Biennale of Illustrations Bratislava and the Bologna Children’s Book fair.
In the 1970s and 1980s the picture book suffered from massive overproduction
resulting in far too many indistinguishable products. As a result of the growing
demands of international cooperation in the book market, pictures can be printed in one
single large print run and sold to different countries where texts in the relevant
languages are then attached. Nevertheless there are two advantages for the consumer:
the cost is reduced, and at best, the originality of vision of the most creative artists,
writers and designers is made available to all.
The Modern Picture Book: its Makers and CharacteristicsThe following modified list has a twofold purpose. It nominates individual illustrators
whose body of work rewards study; and it identifies picture books which exhibit strongly
the diverse characteristics of the modern picture book form as well as some which
sustain the earlier tradition.
230 TYPES AND GENRES