Frame & Case Essay

Becoming a Better Adult Through the Eyes of Picture Books 

Written By: Myeisa Barnhill

Reading gives us two gifts—the gift of understanding and the gift of feeling understood. Through reading, we learn empathy, compassion, respect and understanding. Lucky parents can give their children those skills by doing something as simple and enjoyable as reading. Picture books are an important source of new language, concepts, and lessons for young children. Yet in these intimate moments meant to erode “the dividing line between childhood and adulthood” (Smith) exists the foreboding resilient antonym to the child, the adult. The child-adult binary relationship leads scholars, and thus society, to bifurcate characteristics regarding the distinctions of “adulthood” and “childhood.”  Smith writes characteristics assigned such as, “innocence versus knowingness, vulnerability versus power” faction the “experience-imprisoned adult” from the nostalgic fantastical wonderland exile authors deposit children, that is esoteric to adults (Smith). It places the gap as a polarity between childishness and childlikeness.

The distinction drawn is so familiar that childish is in some danger of being restricted to the depreciatory use that is only one of its functions, while childlike is applied outside its sphere. The rule that childish has a bad sense is too sweeping and misleading. Childish, used of adults or their qualities, and childlike have the opposite implications of blame and approval. Childish means “Thow ought to have outgrown something or to have been outgrown,'” and childlike “Thow has fortunately not outgrown something or been outgrown'”. Childish simplicity in an adult is a fault; childlike simplicity is a merit; but childish simplicity may mean also simplicity in (and not as of) a child, and convey no blame; “childish enthusiasm may be either a child's enthusiasm or a man's silly enthusiasm; childlike enthusiasm is only that of a man who has not let his heart grow hard" (Fowler). The opposition between adult and child also lurks in the intergenerational enmity often at the center of children's books as critical accounts of children’s literature posit this divide continues to shape not just the genre but its unintended audience. Although the gap in research still stands how can the aesthetics of children’s literature influence a better adult? 

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A new body of research has begun investigating the features of picture books that not only support children's learning and transfer of that information to the real world but may reflect positively onto adults (Smith).  Children’s literature militates against adult authority, destabilizing the imbalance that assumes adult maturity equivalent to power. For instance, books such as Ronald Dahl’s Matilda battles the Trunchbull, Pan terrorizes Hook, or Pippi Longstocking’s heroine strength and social capital form this cross-writing that is a “dialogic mix of older and younger voices” (Smith). This blurring of audiences disrupts the hierarchies of adult author and child receiver, reminding the divide between adult-intended and children-intended literature shifts and evanesces. This indistinct bisect can be attributed to the physical aesthetics of picture books that challenge and engage the reader (adult/child) to go beyond the story to form meaning. From Children's Picture Books---The Art of Visual Storytelling by Martin Salisbury et al. they cite this definition as the basis for understanding the nature of picture books as “an art form it hinges on the interdependence of pictures and words.” What makes a picture book unique from other literary works is this interaction between visual and verbal narratives. It is misconceived that picture books are just the use of words that have described the picture or vice versa. To get a full story you are required to connect the context provided with the drama revealed in the image, while leading segments out of the words that can be deduced from the picture or juxtaposing images from the narration. 

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Picture books can actively challenge the reader and require them to engage with both pictures and words to get the full story. In Something from Nothing (1992), author-illustrator Phoebe Gilman uses pictures not only to enhance the text but to introduce a secondary story—literally underneath the primary story, as it happens—and told entirely without words. The story goes Grandfather makes a blanket for baby Joseph. By the time Joseph has become a toddler, his mother decides that the blanket has outlasted its usefulness. Grandfather saves it from the dustbin by exercising his endless ingenuity to morph the jacket’s usefulness, while villagers carry on daily life outside. Meanwhile, beneath the floorboards, a family of mice takes up residence and furnishes their home with the scraps from Grandfather’s tailoring. The worn out bits of Joseph’s erstwhile blanket become dresses, overalls, curtains, tablecloths, bedspreads, and more. Nor do the mice confine themselves to housekeeping. They go on a picnic, swim in the river, attend Hebrew school, pay visits to friends, write and tell stories. When observing the text, the supposedly vital characters of floorboard mice are not mentioned at all. Instead, they are characters who live only in picture introducing a completely different part of the story that would be impossible to know if you only read the words.  

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Gilman’s detailed illustrations reward nearly endless perusal. Potential discussion points include village life, Jewish culture, Joseph’s progress from babyhood to schoolboy to writer of stories, connections between the activity going on above and below the floorboards, and the values of thriftiness and ingenuity. She postulates the value of storytelling and the fact that we all possess the raw materials: a little life experience and creativity that make life more imaginative. Furthermore, many picture books rely on pop-out drawings, colors, or even the physical necessity of a larger page to fit exemplified image scales. This utilization of the medium is more than arbitrary placement but core building tension and the anticipation of turning the page to see the next sequence of events. It encourages the reader to physically seek out the answers that remain hidden from them. The artists’ techniques have effects on their readers’ understanding and emotional response to the story. Given its open-endedness, the bridge between the two can be room for various interpretations. As readers may not grasp themes and symbolisms immediately from text, engaging illustrations in children’s books develop a reader’s (regardless of age) own powers of interpretation. Without even realizing it, they learn experientially that literature, as well as life, can operate on multiple levels. 

As this relates to the concept of becoming a better adult, in the building of maturity adults overtly lack the encouragement to explore or learn as a child because they were implicitly taught as children the bias of childish behavior and desires should become covert. Conformation in an adult society warrants a “young person’s acquisition of the rights and responsibilities associated with maturity” (Smith). This implies that the linear trajectory of growth children follow into adulthood becomes a series of critiqued judgments from other adults onto children that discourages intellectual and social contemplation of one’s childlike dreams. This is sensed in an anecdote by a peer (Yuanfan Jiao) in which they describe the most influential book in their life, Something from Nothing. A blanket old and worn is seen in the eyes of Joseph’s mother as a shortcoming that needs to be trash-ridden for Joseph’s transition into maturity, rather than be valued as a beloved keepsake. An underlying theme in this book rests in devalued children who do not appease their parents (as pointed out by my peer). Often children cite instances of adults rejecting children’s opinions and agency. Implications can range from a microscale to macroscale: parents/adults forcing children into extracurriculars not of interest, without the child’s consent nor discretion, to girls, queer persons, and people of color being systematically oppressed as “perpetual children or misread children as violent adults in a racist narrative to be controlled evidenced by systems of structural racism and acts of police violence” (Smith); thusly such systems hinge on the manifestations of self-doubt and fear carried into “adulthood”. Regarding children’s literature, it is often distinguished as too simplistic and abstract to be of any worth in the “adult world,” to garner its own artistic agency. And yet not valued as subjective and universal enough to allow us to imprint our own details to fill in the gaps affectionately in our own lives, just as any other artistic literary method. The implication of child agency is the required reflection on what it means to accept children’s choices, irrespective of whether the adult believes the outcome is positive or negative. 

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A proposition I would offer to become a better adult includes adopting teachings from children as well as their literature which we craft for them. Children benefit from adults willing to listen authentically to their stories. From characters of our favorite picture books, adults can learn to be less self-reliant, more emotional, lack judgment, be creative, curious, excited, and fearless. A better adult learns to understand, there is no need to reaffirm society’s standards of how you should be when you have not yet chosen what you want to be for yourself. As reaffirmed by Smith who quotes Marah Gubar, “this model accounts for growth as ‘a messy continuum, an ongoing process that involves losses as well as gains.’” In these morals, adults can hope to become a collaborative, akin, and equitable inspiration for their children to be better people, better adults. Children think in concrete terms; it is an important developmental step we do not want to skip. Detaching adulthood from developmental narratives of the presuppositions of adulthood versus childhood opens multiple directions for the analysis of children’s literature to grow. Illustrations that engage the imagination to nudge youngsters toward an appreciation for nuanced literature develop the ultimate story that underlies the visible surface of the material world. 

Works Cited 

Fowler, H.W. A Dictionary of Modern English Usage: The Classic First Edition, 1926. Ed. by David  

Crystal. Oxford University Press, 2009 Salisbury, Martin. and Morag Styles. Children's Picturebooks: The Art of Visual Storytelling. London, Laurence King Pub, 2012. 

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Smith, Victoria Ford. “Adult.” Keywords for Children’s Literature. Second ed., vol. 9, Edited by Philip Nel, Philip and Lissa Paul. New York University Press, 2021. p. 1-3 https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479885435.001.0001   

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Jiao, Yuanfan. “Personal Anecdotes.” University of Connecticut, July 2023.