This course S 2 S 2 S will examine thematic and artistic relationships among some of the extraordinary picture books created by three masters of the twentieth century, and create means of effectively bringing their accomplishments to younger readers. Students will analyze and discuss the picturebooks of Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel), Maurice Sendak and Peter Sis (rhymes
with peace), considering the following questions:

  1.What is the concern for the aesthetic object? What decisions does the artist/author make to create a pleasing picture that may diverge from textual fidelity?

  2.What use does each illustrator make of history? (interpret 'history' in the broadest sense, including personal history, events within the larger world around him, a subject of study or field of knowledge, everything that can happen rather than things that can only be imagined.)

  3.Is there an overt concern for social context, an attempt to relate to contemporary history, or world events?

  4.Does the illustrator reflect or re-shape history? Does the artist attempt to retreat from history? How does the work of each illustrator reflect his own personal history?

  5.What audience does the illustrator address? Is it an audience of children, of children and adults working together,
separate audiences of children and audiences, adults only, or perhaps, simply, himself?

  6.What psychological and/or emotional tasks does the illustrator/author pose for the reader? Does the illustrator/author work on multiple emotional or psychological levels?

  7.How does each author work out the relationship of image to text? How does text and image collaborate to tell a story? Are there meta-stories readers are free to make up for themselves?

  8.How does each author/illustrator investigate the relationship of the illustration to a linear narrative (story line)? Can it be always supportive, or does it sometimes become subversive, too? Is it always subversive? Can it be both in the same book--that is, can image and text collaborate on one level of meaning and challenge each other on another level of meaning?

  9.What is the mythos of each illustrator? Does his body of work attempt to create an intact, imaginary world? Are there significant, repeating design motifs, symbols, narratives that join the separate publications into a compelling organic whole? Are there perhaps competing myths within the artistic gestalt?

 10.Using the work of Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak and Peter Sis, consider, what are the effects of expectations on the
creation and perception of a picture book? How, for example, does a picture expose the author/illustrator's
expectations? How are the viewer's expectations addressed in a picture book illustration? How does each author/artist assume and play upon the viewer's expecTations? How are the reader's expectations exposed?

 11.Continuing the previous train of thought, what might we say is the relationship between art and expectation, both in children's perceptions and in our own? What part does 'stereotype' and 'archetype' play in how one derives sense and meaning from an image in a picture book? Are there positive and negative values engaged by our perception of the
conventional, the familiar, and the too familiar?

 12.Using the work of Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak and Peter Sis as a field of inquiry, consider how one's culture conditions the way one looks at an image in a picture book?