Overview

What happens when the assumptions and practices of museum curators and art educators intersect with the assumptions and practices of publishing for children? This study explores how over three hundred children’s picture books, most of them published in the last three decades in English, introduce children to art and art museums. It considers how the books emerge from and relate to a range of theories and assumptions about childhood and childhood development, children’s literature and culture, illustration, visual art, museology, and art education. As well as examining how these theories and assumptions influence what picture books teach young readers about visiting museums and about how to look at and think about art, it examines which artists and artworks appear most often in picture books and offers a survey of different kinds of art-related picture books: ones that claim to be purely informational, ones that make looking at art a game or a puzzle, ones in which children visit art museums, and many more. Since the books all include reproductions of or allusions to museum artworks, the study also considers the problems illustrators face in depicting museum artworks in illustrations in a different style.

Full Product Details

9781350442313

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Reviews

This book makes us question and rethink the assumptions about what art and museums should be in children's books. Of course, it also changes our perspective on children. * Dilek Acer, Ankara University, Turkey *

This book makes us question and rethink the assumptions about what art and museums should be in children's books. Of course, it also changes our perspective on children. * Dilek Acer, Ankara University, Turkey * I fully agree with Nodelman, quoting Olga Hubard, that “two important contributions of art – the discovery of personal significance and the development of cultural awareness – enrich rather than exclude each other”. Representations of Art meticulously and convincingly charts how difficult it is to find a balance between these two. * Leonardo Reviews *

Author Information

Perry Nodelman is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Winnipeg, Canada, volunteer guide at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, and author of four books and about 150 articles and book chapters about children’s literature published between 1976 and 2022, including Words about Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children’s Picture Books, in print and frequently cited since 1988.

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