The Beauty of Picture Books
Review by Dr. Jerry Flack
November is often celebrated as Picture Book Month. This month’s Book of the Month column examines the values of print picture books and critiques a beautiful picture book exemplar.
The values of print picture books are numerous. Picture books are often children’s first encounter with literacy. They fuse exciting words with colorful visual images. They introduce readers to cultural diversity, unique people and places, and a myriad of disciplines such as language arts, science, social studies, art, and even mathematics. They are emotional celebrations able to move readers to both laughter and tears. Print picture books even appeal to the senses. Holding a brand new picture book can be a joyous tactile sensation for children. A new picture book even smells fresh!
This month’s picture book honors a contribution that is rarely acknowledged as giftedness. Public attention to giftedness is often associated with space science, great artists, writers, composers… Agriculture—working the earth’s soil—is rarely seen as giftedness personified despite the fact that agriculture is often cited as the greatest invention of all time and was almost certainly devised by imaginative women. (Men were hunters.)
A Green Place to Be: The Creation of Central Park reveals that the greening of America and the world is hardly a new concept. As early as 1858, the city of New York was growing so fast with roads and new tall buildings that open spaces were in jeopardy. One key undeveloped Manhattan location was badly polluted. Nearby factories poisoned the air and wild pigs defiled its muddy bogs. Architect Calvert Vaux convinced the city leaders to reserve a minimum of 778 acres as open space and to sponsor a competition for the design of a great park for the city. Vaux was well established as an architect, but he was unfamiliar with land development. He invited Frederick Law Olmsted, who among many occupations had once been a farmer, to join him in creating a design for a new park in the heart of New York City that they chose to name Greensward. Their design entry was chosen with the provision that the park creators would rename the space New York City’s Central Park. From the outset, Vaux and Olmsted emphasized the egalitarian nature of their park design. Central Park would be built to be enjoyed by all people regardless of age, race, wealth or social class. (Olmsted was a fervent anti-slavery crusader.)
Virtually every inch of the ground had to be changed. Swamps had to be drained, giant boulders needed to be blasted into smaller pieces to be used both in building park structures and as part of the varied landscape, and pipes needed to be planted to divert waterways. Bridges and arches had to be built for carriages so that pedestrians had clear pathways to fully enjoy the many gardens and a new forest of elm trees. The first park location, the skating pond, was opened during the winter of 1858. It quickly became a success. By the summer of 1859, the Ramble was introduced to park visitors. Olmsted hired musicians, seated in boats on the Central Park Lake, to create music for pedestrians to saunter through the new gardens. Soon a children’s park and a dairy were established. Parents could receive free milk at the dairy to feed their babies. Stone fragments of boulders were utilized to build more than 30 arches, bridges and band shells in the park. Sculptor Emma Stebbins created the Angel of the Water statue at the Bethesda Terrace. Gardeners constantly added new plants and trees to the park grounds. Olmsted especially loved elm trees. His passion thrived and survived. Today, Central Park is home to one of the last elm forests in America. Olmsted had a predilection for planting trees and plants that would grow greatly over time. He additionally introduced grey squirrels to the park. Olmsted became known and respected as the nation’s first landscape architect.
By 1872, as Central Park flourished, Vaux and Olmsted went their separate ways to create additional green spaces for the White House, the U.S. Capitol grounds, the Chicago World’s Fair, and Stanford University. Central Park has been renovated and expanded (presently 843 acres) many times since its creation. It remains one of the most iconic human achievements in the world. Central Park has been the site of countless open-air weddings, including Olmsted’s marriage to Mary Perkins in 1859. Film makers have used Central Park as a major setting for such classic movies as When Harry Met Sally, On the Town, Barefoot in the Park, and Hannah and Her Sisters. The Beatles gave their first American concert in Central Park on February 8, 1964. It is one of the most photographed places in the world. Forty-two million visitors enjoy Central Park annually.
A Green Place to Be: The Creation of Central Park is Ashley Benham Yazdani’s debut picture book. She won the 2020 Golden Kite Award from The Society of Children’s Book Writers and for Picture Book Text. Her narrative excites and activates history. Her lush watercolor illustrations, rendered in a folk-art style, highlight the 19th-century origins of Central Park as well as its present beauty. During the Victorian Era and presently children and adults of all races are featured. So, too, are people of diverse ages and exceptionalities. The opening spread reveals the beauty of the park, its diverse patrons, and its innumerable uses. A senior is enjoying a visit to the park using a walker just as a young woman is traversing a paved pathway in her self-propelled wheelchair. Joggers, skate boarders, and parents with children in strollers likewise enjoy a lakeside walkway. An artist is painting the Angel of the Waters sculpture while other visitors are consulting park maps. Guests continue to find peace and tranquility in Central Park.
Picture Book Elements
The fundamentals of print picture books are well represented in A Green Place to Be. The book jacket and covers are identical. The front image, appropriately suffused in multiple green hues, features lush vegetation ranging from flower leaves to a dense forest of elm trees. Caricatures of Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted in the upper left corner picture them overseeing their green masterpiece in its first glorious days. The back illustration highlights contemporary children sailing toy boats in a reflecting pool. The front flap of the book jacket provides an overview of the history of Central Park while the rear jacket flap introduces author-illustrator Ashley Benham Yazdani. The book’s end papers provide readers with bird’s-eye views of paths and waterways in the park. The title page features the author-illustrator, title, publisher’s name and colophon super-imposed on a pastoral view of park green space. The Candlewick Press colophon features the silhouette of a gentle black bear carrying a lighted candle.
The primary narration unfolds with double-page spreads rendered in watercolors. Yazdani’s pictorial history lesson portrays the once polluted area that would become Central Park, the crown jewel of Manhattan. Additional spreads reveal Vaux and Olmsted working on their ten-foot-long blueprint for the great park. Skaters frolic on the skating rink as early as the winter of 1858. The progress of creating Central Park is unveiled in Yazdani’s four-season watercolor images. One two-page spread features the 30 or more bridges and archways that Vaux designed for the park. Another painting shows Olmsted planting rare wildflowers, abundant shrubs, and elm trees that would grow ever more beautiful in time. Additional panoramas reveal children at play and visitors strolling through the park during its celebrated history of 163 years.
The back or end matter of A Green Place to Be is substantial. Cameo portraits complement brief histories of the park’s two primary creators. The history of many Central Park features is revealed in words and images. An Author’s Note, acknowledgments, and a bibliography round out the end matter. In an unusual twist, the copyright page is located on the final page of the book.
Home Activities
Every year since 1938, the American Library Association has bestowed the Randolph Caldecott Medal annually to the illustrator of the most distinguished picture book published in the United States in the previous year. Most of the 83 Caldecott Medal books remain in print and make great reading for children. A complete list of Caldecott Medalists may be found via online searches. Urge students to read and critique great favorites among the Caldecott Medal winners such as Robert McCloskey’s Make Way for Ducklings (1942) and Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are (1964). These two classic picture books represent yet another facet of picture book design, vertical or horizontal orientation. The former is presented in a vertical format; the latter features a horizontal layout. Additionally, as many as five additional picture books are named Caldecott Honor Books each year. These treasures greatly extend the Caldecott picture book library for gifted readers.
Jerry Pinkney received the Caldecott Medal in 2010 for his virtually wordless picture book masterpiece, The Lion & the Mouse, a visual retelling of one of the best known and most beloved of Aesop’s Fables. Wordless picture books are rare. The entire weight of storytelling rests on the shoulders of the illustrator. Urge young gifted artists to examine The Lion & the Mouse to determine how Pinkney relies upon pictures alone to narrate an ancient story. Pinkney also creates another rarity of equal import. The book cover, front and back, is also wordless. Pinkney’s name and the book title only appear on the spine of the book jacket and cover. Urge mature artists to imitate Pinkney’s artistry by creating wordless spreads or an entire picture book on a subject of their choice. They may follow Pinkney’s lead and visually retell an ancient fable or folk tale, a story from a holy book (e.g., David & Goliath), or share an original story of their own without the use of words. Pinkney’s only nod to words are minimal animal sounds.
Worldwide, the Hans Christian Andersen award for illustrators has been presented bi-annually since 1966. The only American winner of this prestigious illustrator award was Maurice Sendak in 1970. In 2012, Peter Sis, a multiple Caldecott Honor Medalist, who lives and works in the United States, won the Andersen award for illustration as the nominee of his native country, the Czech Republic. Popular international illustrators who have won the Hans Christian Andersen award are Mitsumasa Anno (Japan), Lisbeth Zwerger (Austria), and Anthony Browne (United Kingdom). Gifted children may explore books by winners of this highest honor presented to book artists. Compare and contrast a minimum of two picture books by such Andersen medalists as Maurice Sendak and Peter Sis.
Encourage gifted children to visit the website of Ashley Benham Yazdani to learn more about her work, especially how she came to share the story of the creation of Central Park.
Yazdani, Ashley Benham. A Green Place to Be: The Creation of Central Park. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press, 2019.
