preview

The Caldecott Medal Essay

Decent Essays

The Caldecott Medal is named after Randolph Caldecott, a 19th century illustrator. The award is presented to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children and was first awarded in 1938 for a book called Animals of the Bible illustrated by Dorothy Lathrop. The award is given out once a year every year since 1938 with the most recent award recipient being Dan Santat for The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend. Originally there were no awards given out to the illustrators of children books, but once you look at the detail and story building illustrations in each of the award winning books, it is easy to see why they created the award to begin with. It is my belief that without such colorful and interesting …show more content…

Furthermore, the illustrations paint a beautiful picture that I like to think is an insight into a child’s mind, which I is a key element in this book and what makes it so great. Since the book is narrated by a child the intentional simplicity of the words and the controlled chaos that is the illustrations breathes unadulterated life into a rather normal children’s book. Book 2: The illustrations in the book are all done on a black and white scratchboard by Beth Krommes, with a hint of yellow and orange thrown in once in a while which creates light and warmth throughout the story. Each page in the story defines or tells about an item which is then illustrated on the page. The hints of yellow create warmth, and since the story is set around the nighttime it generates and shows light in the darkness. The plot is all about the main character coming home and getting ready for bed and the scratchboard illustrations create a gorgeous setting for the …show more content…

The illustrations should help readers anticipate the unfolding of a story’s action and its climax. Book 1: The illustrations do help predict the story’s action and climax, which is simply that the main characters parents come and pick her up from her Nanna and Poppy’s house and she has a realization that, when she gets older and becomes a Nanna, that she wants a house with a hello, goodbye window too. It is easy to predict this outcome with the help of the illustrations, they set a very colorful and happy tone, and if this was simply a picture book without any words you would be able to tell the story very easily. Book 2: The illustrations are the only thing in this story that keeps the reader intrigued. Without them you would not have a story at all, just random words that have no rhyme or reason to them. Furthermore, if you did not have the words in the book it would be easy to tell where the story is going and help you predict what is happening on the page. It is almost like the creator of the story wants the reader to use their imagination and create their own story by simply looking at the pictures of the

Get Access