Janet and John Ahlberg, artist and writer, staked out a pictorial territory, a historic
era of the 1940s and 1950s of England. Janet Ahlberg’s detailed pictures, are replete
with images which exude atmosphere, nostalgia, and amuse parents as well as children,
as in Peepo! (1981), a book-as-toy. At their most innovative, the Ahlbergs created The
Jolly Postman (1986). The eponymous hero delivers the mail between folk- and fairy tale
characters on a fictive level, and literally delivers them to the reader, enclosed in
envelopes within the picture book pages themselves: a birthday card to baby bear, a
formal warning to the Big Bad Wolf from a firm of solicitors, a commemorative booklet
about Cinderella’s wedding, a mail order catalogue for witches and so on. Thus the oral
fairy tale genre is delivered in a host of written discourses and language registers and
the Ahlbergs increased the art and devices of the novelty book.
Anno [Mitsumaso Anno]. There is a a strong mathematical element manifested through
play upon perspective, paradox and logic, and which gives Anno’s picture books a
potential readership well beyond that of childhood while nevertheless intriguing and
delighting children. He takes his viewers travelling through time, space and cultures in
his wordless Journey books through Britain, Italy and the USA. From a bird’s eye
perspective, the picture-plane teems with busily peopled identifiable scenes. References
to literature and painting—Shakespeare and Sendak, Constable and Courbet—are
scattered among the craftsmen and artisans, pageants and parades. Anno’s Aesop (1987)
is a metafictive multidimensioned work of art about telling stories, interpreting pictures,
and the practices of parenthood. A book within a book, it carries a facsimile of Aesop’s
Fables retold and illustrated by Anno, and a separate text of the ‘readings’ of those
fables by a preliterate father fox to his son: four story-tellers at work, and Anno is
deliberately playing fast and loose with at least twenty-five literary or graphic
conventions.
Jeannie Baker provides examples of the development of collage technique, used, in the
following instances, to support the environmental theme. With cut paper, clay, hair,
string, fabric, feathers and found objects she produces collage constructions which are
then expertly photographed to produce a threedimensional effect. Where the Forest
Meets the Sea (1988) reveals a child’s imagination at work as he explores the tropical
rainforest in North Queensland. Time merges on the page; past and future inhabitants
of the territory are visible ghostly presences. Baker’s wordless picture book Window
(1991) graphically depicts the gradual devastation of the Australian countryside in a
twenty-four year span, as we watch a baby grow to adulthood and in turn become a
parent. With vision allied to great technical skill Baker shows how nature feeds off
nature, and how each new generation is unable to learn from the mistakes of the
preceding one.
Quentin Blake. Originally a cartoonist, Blake has illustrated many notable picture
books with his spritely pen. His awareness of the potential of the form may be seen in
The Story of the Dancing Frog (1984).The framework, in the present, in sepia monochrome
shows a mother telling a story to her child; the main text is the child’s visualisation (in
colour) of her mother’s words. As well as distinguishing the structure of the story within
the story, the monochrome passages act as a device to hold back the narrative thrust,
and promote a reflective quality. He has collaborated on several occasions with Russell
Hoban. In How Tom Beat Captain Najork and his Hired Sportsmen (1974), they tease the
THE MODERN PICTURE BOOK 231