Blanchard Wade and the literature of American empire. Children’s Literature in Education 48: 245–261.
7 Developments of Picturebooks
Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
Introduction: Some Preliminary Considerations
This chapter focuses on the historical development of the picturebook from 1945 to the end of the twentieth century. Such an enterprise cannot do justice to all relevant artistic, historical, political, and societal transformations that impacted on the changes that the picturebook has undergone during a time period of more than fifty years. Hence, this chapter emphasizes the most relevant turns in the conceptualization of the picturebook in North America and parts of Europe. A starting point for the period was the shifts in political and historical as well as cultural developments, since these caused more or less radical changes related to the concept of childhood as well as the artistic and narrative affordances of picturebooks. The first section concentrates on the first five years after World War II, when publishers and picturebook artists faced the multifaceted challenges of a postwar society. The second section focuses on the period of 1950–1965, which witnessed new trends in picturebook design and art. The subsequent time span, 1965–1980, saw the surge of the Pop Art picturebook and other experiments in picturebook design. The final decades of the twentieth century showed the growing impact of transmediation and media franchises as well as the increasing hybridization of the picturebook, which led to the emergence of the postmodern picturebook. Since these tendencies go hand in hand with a transgression of age boundaries, crossover picturebooks increasingly dominated the picturebook market.
Looking Backward and Forward: The First Years after World War II
In the aftermath of World War II, publishers, educators, and picturebook authors, particularly in Europe, sought to publish and create picturebooks that were not explicitly ideological. In order to achieve this goal, they either relied on popular and traditional picturebooks devoid of any propagandistic effects or contacted already established picturebook makers as well as new talents in order to meet the increasing demand for aesthetically attractive picturebooks. A pioneering role can be attributed to the Swiss illustrators Alois Carigiet, Hans Fischer, and Felix Hoffmann, whose lavishly illustrated picturebooks introduced a new modernist style in European picturebook art. The same applies to some Scandinavian picturebook-makers, such as Lennart Hellsing, Tove Jansson, Egon Mathiesen, and Arne Ungermann (Christensen 2003; Druker 2008). While some European countries, such as the Nordic countries, France, and Italy, regarded the year 1945 as a new start – Sweden even claimed this year as the beginning of a new “Golden Age” in Swedish children’s literature – publishers as well as picturebook-makers in other countries, such as Germany, Poland, and Spain, struggled with difficult constraints due to paper restrictions, the poor quality of the printing press, and sometimes even censorship measures. In order to satisfy the hunger for ideologically innocuous picturebooks, publishers reprinted traditional picturebooks from the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, which were regarded as classics and therefore politically harmless.
The preference for the depiction of idyllic scenery and a harmonious and joyful way of life is evident in many picturebooks released in the first five years after the end of the war. Fairy tales and fantastic stories predominated, while realistic stories mostly showed people’s everyday lives in a rural setting untouched by the atrocities of war and the struggle for survival. Despite these conservative and sometimes even nostalgic tendencies, a wealth of publishers and illustrators were drawn to the once proscribed modernist traditions of the 1920s and 1930s. By establishing a new connection to the broken avant-garde ambitions in the realm of picturebook design, they contributed to the renewal of the picturebook as an art form, which was subject to ideological misuse and propagandistic effects during the war years. Picturebooks created by exiled authors and illustrators as well as heretofore unpublished modernist picturebooks could find a niche with ambitious small publishers, despite having limited commercial potential.
As opposed to these picturebooks, which have largely subsequently disappeared from use, Reverend W. Awdry published a longstanding best seller with The Three Railway Engines (1945), which was the first book of the famous Railway series, better known through the second volume, Thomas the Tank Engine (1946). The author created 23 volumes up to 1972. Launched as a TV series with the title Thomas & Friends on British children’s television in 1984 and continuously renewed through rebranding and transmedia extensions until the present, this picturebook series is an early example of a multimedia system complemented by merchandising products.
The foundation of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) in 1946 and the official conferences and meetings activated by these institutions had a far-reaching impact on children’s literature in Europe and even beyond. In order to spread the ideals of tolerance, solidarity, and peace – as announced by the UNESCO charter – policymakers and practitioners demanded a new children’s literature that should particularly represent these ideas. One of the first picturebooks that targeted the issues of diplomacy and negotiations as a potential means of peacemaking was Erich Kästner’s Die Konferenz der Tiere (The Animals’ Conference, 1949), with illustrations by Walter Trier. Similar picturebook projects were realized in the ensuing years.
The 1950s and 1960s as Trailblazers for New Trends in Picturebook Art
Although the prominence of retrospective tendencies in works of the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s may suggest that this was a period of creative stasis, this evaluation does not hold true on closer consideration. To begin with, several prestigious picturebook awards were established in this time period: the Australian Children’s Book of the Year Award (est. 1952), paying attention to Australian illustrators, the Kate Greenaway Medal (est. 1956) as the most important illustrator’s award in the United Kingdom, and the German Jugendliteraturpreis (est. 1956), with a separate category for the best picturebook of the year – first awarded to Louis Fatio and Roger Duvoisin’s The Happy Lion (1955). Another steppingstone in the international promotion of children’s books and picturebooks was the founding of IBBY (International Board of Books for Young People) in Zurich in 1953, which established the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1956 as the highest international recognition for an author and illustrator of children’s literature. Among the winners of the annual prize for illustrators (given since 1966) are Mitsumasa Anno, Alois Carigiet, Klaus Ensikat, Svend Otto, Květa Pacovská, Maurice Sendak, and Tomi Ungerer.
The conspicuous artistic and narrative development of the picturebook reverberated in international book fairs and activities devoted to the promotion of children’s book illustration. The Bologna Book Fair in Italy, established in 1963, is the biggest international trade exhibition for children’s literature. Every year the Bologna Ragazzi Award (divided into several categories) is given to the best illustrated picturebook. In 1967, the Biennial of Illustration Bratislava (BIB), Slovakia, was celebrated for the first time. Under the auspices of UNESCO and IBBY, this event presents the best in international children’s book illustration and gives artists from countries around the world the opportunity to present their work. During this meeting, a grand prize for unique illustration and the Golden Apple are awarded to outstanding artists. Both the Ragazzi Award and the BIB grand prize pay particular attention to gifted picturebook-makers from all over the world, including countries whose picturebook production is often unknown to an international book market.
At the same time, UNESCO commissioned renowned photographers to create photographic picturebooks for children that depict children’s everyday lives in different countries all over the world, thus promoting the ideals of tolerance and mutual understanding. The most prominent series, with photos by Anna Riwkin-Brick, started in 1956 with Eva möter Noriko-San (Eva Meets Noriko-San), with a text written by Astrid Lindgren. Originally published
