Many movies and TV shows employ a cold open—a short scene before the opening credits designed to draw you in immediately. I love when a picture book does, too. It adds urgency.
Here’s the cold open from The Enemy, a thoughtful, bold book that looks retro but reads as a product of the present day:





In a typical picture book image, each illustration equates to a single incident. However, exceptions exist.
To wit, consider The Luck of the Loch Ness Monster, a book that deftly combines humor, myth, a bit of suspense, a pinch of history (albeit twisted history), and, at its core, an unusual and touching friendship.


to replace the shoddy scan-and-weld job I had here previously.
The left-hand page shows the protagonist (in red) and the right-hand page does, too, yet they are the same scene. A person can’t be in two places at once unless she’s a time traveler—or a picture book character. Yet the reader doesn’t feel anything is askew. This tweak to the laws of physics passes muster in a picture book. And, in this case, adds playfulness.
Some books play with form beyond the traditional boundaries of the narrative. The endearing The Curious Garden uses its endpapers to trace the dramatic arc of its story.



Sometimes it's not theme addressed on the "outskirts" of a picture book, but actual plot. The Bravest of Them All, a strong little adventure, pulls off a neat and quiet effect.


Then you see the back cover:

That's the (obviously old) horse tank that has an important role earlier in the book; as noted above, the author did not explicitly state that it was a casualty of the climactic tornado.
Yet when processing the mention of a "new" horse tank with this final image, the reader makes meaning. (Of course, given that it's clear from the cover that the story is about a tornado, it's not hard to assume that lots of stuff would've been damaged. But still, it's a clever—and haunting—way of conveying information and leaving the reader with a reminder of the scary power of nature.)
Another example of playing with picture book form doesn’t involve the illustrations at all but rather their borders.
Take the real-life adventure The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, a triumph on multiple levels.

Back to the borders. Look how the book sets the mood using not just the images but the color of the commonly nondescript edges of the page.


Not only the color but also the size of borders can make a statement, as demonstrated in the timeless and wordless The Snowman.


I suspect my next observation has already been addressed in countless dissertations, so I’ll simply state it without analysis. In Where the Wild Things Are, the art starts off in a fairly small box, and the size of each subsequent box increases as the story moves Max closer to his fantastical encounters.



When in the land of the wild things, the art is pushing the boundaries, whether letterboxed or full-bleed.


Part 5.
2 comments:
Great post, Marc. I so love how THE ENEMY sets the stage and keep thinking I want to use that device sometime myself! Great examples here, some of which I'll have to track down.
Marc — you know, it's funny you happened to pick that Loch Ness spread as I worked a bit to convince the editor to retain that device (the multiple appearance of the protagonist) — she thought it could potentially confuse young readers ("Why are there two Katerina's!?"). I saw her point, but felt that for this scene the conceit solved many visual problems (receiving of oatmeal, throwing it out the porthole and swiping a cinnamon bun) all without having multiple scenes — and it suggests the precocity of a young girl. Great post, thanks!
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