Cultural Barriers

Gabrielle Emanuel Article

I found a very interesting article by Gabrielle Emmanuel talking about cultural barriers that impact on writing and illustrating children's books. She highlights some cultural differences that she discovered on a trip to Mali. Knees are seen as a private part of the body in West Africa so illustrations of characters that would seem perfectly acceptable in many other places in the world would be viewed as entirely inappropriate. Even something as simple as a plant or animal that is not native to the area can cause confusion, "Robert McCloskey's Blueberries for Sal caused trouble too. The kids seemed unsure whether blueberries were real or the stuff of fantasy. Same with the bear Sal stumbles upon."

Gabrielle Emanuel came back to America and met with E B Lewis who was going to illustrate her book. Lewis taught her a great deal about illustration and her summary of his methods and ideas is inspiring.

"he told me there was one theme that connected all the books he illustrates, "and it's emotion."

"His arrival promptly ripped apart my long-held perception that a book's illustrations and words were nearly inseparable. I'd always imagined they were born together or, at least, in close collaboration.
With a chuckle, Lewis set me straight: "I don't think about the author at all. They had their opportunity to play in their sandbox, and now this is my turn to play."

"He talked about "writing" the images. He said he spends time thinking about the punctuation in his paintings. A comma is an element that gives the child's eyes a little visual break. An exclamation mark helps indicate the drama of the scene. Lewis talked about this in a matter-of-fact manner: "This visual language is actually a language, and I don't look at it as illustration."

"It made me realize that a picture book is a story told in two languages: one that kids are learning, and the other that they're fluent in."

"In addition to learning what Lewis is doing, I also learned what he wasn't not doing.

He was not repeating the text. "That's already told. Why would I tell it again?" He flips to the last page of our story. The illustration is a panoramic view of a village at dusk. Everything feels quiet. Lewis admitted, "The text doesn't suggest any of that."

"First, color contrast. "Look at this one where she's pounding millet," he said, pulling out our book. The page is full of greens and oranges. "Then you turn the page and you go to these blues. So blue and orange are a direct contrast." This is almost like varying the inflection in your voice as you read aloud.

"you can never compete with a child's imagination," Lewis said. "Their imagination is going to be far greater than anything you can ever paint." This often means not depicting the most fundamental parts of a story."

"As I listened to Lewis, I started to realize that we were both tiptoeing along a balance beam, trying to figure out just how much to give kids in order to inspire their own confidence. Confidence to trust their imagination. Confidence to see the written word as theirs to own."

There are some interesting ideas in this article both from Gabrielle Emanuel and E B Lewis. I would like to try and apply them to my work concentrating on
- Not simply repeating the information in the text.
- Using colours and compositions to describe the tone of voice of the illustration.
-Suggesting parts of the story and allowing the readers imagination to take over.
-Concentrating on emotion.