Research Point : Children’s fiction

Occasionally when an illustrator gets the first shot at providing imagery for a Children’s work of fiction, they land on something very unique which defines that text going forward in an audience’s visual mind.

The research exercise cited examples such as Winnie the pooh, The Gruffalo and Little Red Riding Hood as examples where an author has written a text and the first illustrator to have accompanied these with images has defined an enduring visual association with that work.

Alice in Wonderland

One of the first examples which sprang to mind here was Alice in Wonderland by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen name of Lewis Carroll. This is a classic Victorian literary whimsical tale published in 1865 which has proven so enduring and endearing that it’s never been out of print since it was created. Although Lewis Carroll was the first to create illustrations for his own tale of fancy, John Tenniel was the first artist to create illustrations for the book in the form of 42 wood engravings.

Although Tenniel’s illustrations will forever be associated with Alice in Wonderland and they are much more than just a mere embellishment of Lewis Carroll’s own drawings, it seems only right to say that Carroll’s original creations were very fitting in their own right, coming straight from the author’s imagination alongside the text and they beautifully convey the nonsensical world and it’s inhabitants. Tenniel captured really apt passages of text from the story and compressed them into great vignettes which summed up the accompanying text really well and succeeded in pulling children’s literature of the time away from being didactic and morally loaded into full on fantasy and folly for it’s own sake.

Alice in Wonderland 1897

I have a modern reprint version of Alice in Wonderland with these Tenniel illustrations and they’re very much of their time : I think this is what makes them not only endearing, stylistically they seal the story firmly in the Victorian period and are almost a comfortable expectation with the style of nonsensical prose presented in the book. There’s a huge amount of familiarity here with these images, outside of Disney’s sugar coated treatment these are perhaps still the first illustrations which spring to mind when Alice in Wonderland is mentioned : the fact that as a text it still continues to inspire endlessly even now and many visual interpretations are heavily based on Tenniel’s designs proves how well it’s prevailed into pop culture.

Charlotte’s Web

An evergreen favourite of times past, (who doesn’t remember reading this at some point during their formative years at school?) Charlotte’s Web by E.B.White is a tale of innocence and friendship with an undertone of impending peril. The lovely illustrations by Garth Williams are another example of visual memory being associated first with a story. These remind me of  E. H. Shepard’s illustrations for A.A.Milne’s Winnie the Pooh a little, although not quite as loose and scratchy, they have a similar quality : perhaps just by virtue of them being executed in pen & ink, or maybe it’s the anthropomorphic qualities. I can remember reading this at a very early age at school and poring over the drawings : granted I had that preoccupation with every book I ever read as a youngster that had accompanying illustrations, but this was definitely one which stayed with me. Another fine example of an illustrator hitting the golden zone with careful choices of text passage to condense into imagery. It’s interesting when reading about Garth Williams choices how he states he tried to get inside the author’s mind when he was creating ideas for illustrations to see what they might be imagining as they wrote.. quite an abstract thought process, yet one which is employed by any artist or illustrator who endeavours to capture a snapshot of something in their mind’s eye. Storyboard artists develop a heightened ability for this, comic artists too : it’s the very thing that can make or break a visual narrative and a highly evocative and intriguing set of thought processes. I believe in the case of Charlotte’s web, there’s familiarity here as with Alice in Wonderland : they’re so intrinsically linked in popular culture it’s almost hard to imagine mention of the story without conjuring up the illustrations to mind and vice versa.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Although not initially illustrated by Quentin Blake, it was perhaps his accompanying illustrations which set the tone for the modern memory of Roald Dahl’s darkly humorous series featuring Charlie Bucket and the Wonka empire. The first edition was illustrated by Joseph Schindelman, and although these are fine illustrations in their own right, in my opinion they don`t convey the characters of the story very well. The rendering style is rather nostalgic and vintage, yet doesn’t seem to impart the whimsical nature of the Wonka world in the same way as Blake’s illustrations do.

It was Quentin Blake’s character designs which defined the character’s physical look and neuroses, much of which carried straight through into the 1971 movie version, and even on into Tim Burton’s version from 2005. For all it’s modern matting and visual effects, the 1971 version is still the better version I believe, there were lots of visual discrepancies in the 2005 version which ruined the continuity somewhat and Willy Wonka wasn’t old enough to be passing on a factory : neither did he have the same eccentricities as Gene Wilder’s much more light hearted and comedic character. I think the casting was much better in the original, possibly proving that Tim Burton’s nepotic bias for including the same stars in many of his productions doesn’t always pan out.

I must be one of the few people in the world who isn’t in awe of Quentin Blake’s illustrations : i’m making no apology for it though, his just isn’t a style I was ever endeared to very much, but with regard to the pairing with Roald Dahl’s eccentric and fanciful stories I think his work is a perfect match and I couldn’t imagine opening up a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory book and not seeing Blake’s drawings dancing across the pages.

Conclusion

Looking over several examples while researching this point, I believe it can be assumed that there’s a strong correlation between the illustrations in a children’s fiction book setting the visual memory for a tale, possibly proving that recall based on particular illustrations accompanying a text is often simpler than trying to remember what a story was about. (a picture tells a thousand words). Along with the recall, it’s a particular accompanying illustrator that will be the one which comes to mind. If anyone mentioned Alice in Wonderland to me for example, I would immediately remember Tenniel’s illustrations even though i’ve seen many other illustrators give the story a treatment. Harry Potter’s first four books are the same, they will always bring to mind the same covers, incidental illustrations etc. I don’t think you even need to be able to break down visual memory association to know that there’s definitely a huge amount of power in illustrative association with particular texts.

Image references:

https://www.amusingplanet.com/2010/10/original-illustrations-of-charlotte-web.html

https://wonka.fandom.com/f/t/Mike%20Teavee

https://spongebob.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000000318961

https://www.slideshare.net/katelllaurelli/l2a-willy-wonka-the-finders

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Tenniel_-_Illustration_from_The_Nursery_Alice_(1890)_-_c03757_07.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alice_par_John_Tenniel_37.png

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Tenniel_-_Illustration_from_The_Nursery_Alice_(1890)_-_c06544_04.jpg