Board Book Illustrators Research

Board book illustrators and writers

I looked at several writers and/or illustrators of board books.

Stephen Cartwright, Lucy Cousins, Eric Carle, Ted Dewan and Axel Scheffler, to name a few.  I’ve chosen to write about three.

Stephen Cartwright developed the popular Apple Tree Farm books along with writer Heather Amery for Usborne Books.  The illustrations look very simple and child friendly, but have a large amount of detail within them.  The children in the illustrations, even though they are stylized, move and express emotions very accurately and strike a cord with other children.  The animals are cuddly without being sickly sweet or cute.  The backgrounds are simple but you immediately know where the event is taking place.  He treads an amazingly fine line between realism and cartoon.

Usborne books developed a dual text approach to books to enable younger readers to get more from their books.  There is text top and bottom of the pages.  The upper text contains a more detailed story, whilst the lower text is a simpler sentence that still carries the same story line but that an early reader can achieve by his/herself.  Stephen Cartwright therefore had to illustrate the stories so that the images could be interpreted very clearly by two different levels of readers.  No mean feat.  And, the text had to go top and bottom of the illustrations.

Not surprisingly, he had a good working relationship with Usborne, producing Phonics books, First Experience books and the Apple Tree Farm range, with all their pop-up and lift-the-flap spin offs.   One of his trademarks was to include a small duckling in every picture for small children to spot, which was such a clever ploy.  So even before children could read, they were searching the illustration for duck (as he was called) and really looking at the images.

Duck even starred in his own books, he was so popular!

And there was a toy duck, now not in production. - They got the beak just right.

Ted Dewan

I missed out on Bing Bunny.  My children were too old when they were produced, and I wasn’t looking round for toddler books when they were in the shops.

From the images I’ve hunted down on the web, he is the perfect toddler character.  Again, not too ‘cute’, but still toddler friendly, Bing’s facial expressions and body language capture his different emotions really well.  His little toy companion works a treat as an extension of both his feelings and ours.  I love the retro feel to the artwork and backgrounds, and the colours are also just right, bright and attractive but not gaudy.  Again, the backgrounds are so simple, but just the addition of a hand basin tells you we are in the bathroom.

The book titles are spot on too, with just the sort of events a child of that age will   have experienced – getting their hands sticky, being introduced to new food, going to bed.  All the areas that can become battlegrounds treated with humour.

It’s a Bing thing.  He needs to be re-published.

Lucy Cousins.

I love Maisy for her hand-painted feel and distinctive black outline.  She has a rightful place in popular toddler literature for the accessible ‘I-could-do-this’ feel to the images.  Lucy Cousins has created a very colourful but simple world, which again introduces toddlers to everyday events that they might not have experienced yet, such as swimming, sleep-overs and camping.

 

One of the things I particularly like about Maisy is how Lucy Cousins dresses her.  She is as likely to be in a pair of dungarees as anything, and even though she is a feminine character, she reads very much as a second or third child who is dressed in anything (as long as it’s clean) and gets on with life without fussing. I think this is a large part of her appeal.

She has a range of friends to explore experiences with, and is a very positive character.  The style of illustration is instantly recognisable.