Picture books are truly remarkable. Unassuming and often underestimated, they accomplish a lot in about 32 pages. Picture books are tools that build literacy, strengthen family bonds, teach important concepts, provoke strong emotions, build empathy, and entertain. The best picture books invite readers (and pre-readers) to enter worlds both familiar and strange and identify with characters of all sorts. They use the interplay of words and text to tell a story that is greater and deeper (and often weirder) than either would be alone.
The delightful variety of creative storytelling styles you find in picture books is possible, in part, because they are created for children as their primary audience, and children are more willing to accept the strange and wonderous than adults are. Adults tend to limit ourselves by insisting that the world follows the rules we expect it to follow, but children’s minds are more open. There’s a great Madeline L’Engle quote that backs this up, saying, “You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” L’Engle’s children’s novels and picture books are full of respect for children and their capacity to understand deep truths through imagination and love.
There’s a certain freedom in telling stories for children. They might correct you on specific details about what koalas eat or whether Pluto is a planet, (I know, it is a planetoid; I’ve talked to a kid about it) but they won’t bat an eye at planets writing each other letters, magical pots of spaghetti, and any number of anthropomorphic animals.
That freedom can lead to some very strange and marvelous stories. Think back to the 1940s, to Margaret Wise Brown and her timeless, beloved, sweet, and deeply bizarre classics, Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny. Remember Crockett Johnson’s 1955 classic, Harold and the Purple Crayon, in which the title character draws an adventure for himself and eats all nine kinds of pie that he likes best. Remember the 1960s and the strange and amazing heyday of Maurice Sendak, Marcia Brown, Ed Emberley, Judi Barrett, Charlotte Zolotow, Arnold Lobel, Eric Carle, William Steig, Richard Scarry, and Shel Silverstein. And onward though the decades, with Tomi dePaola, James Marshall, Mercer Meyer, Jules Feiffer, David Weisner, Carson Ellis, Jon Klassen, Yuyi Morales, Adam Rex, Emily Gravett, Raul the Third, and so many others creating odd and fascinating stories for children and those brave enough to follow their lead.
While picture books are often full of lighthearted whimsy, they can also be dark. They sometimes touch on grief, jealousy, and anger, since those are all present in children’s lives, and the best picture books are not afraid to grapple with those difficult — but very real — emotions. Maybe it is because children’s imaginations are wide-ranging and strange, and the best children’s authors have managed not to lose touch with the passion and wildness of childhood. They haven’t allowed their imaginations to be penned in by adult concerns of what would be believable or appealing. The originality and glorious weirdness of picture books is part of their appeal. They are a safe place for us to be as weird as we want to be.
If you don’t have small children in your day-to-day life, it may have been a while since you picked up a picture book, but I bet you remember some favorites from your own childhood. If you’d like to be reminded of some oldies-but-goodies and perhaps encounter some triumphs of modern children’s literature, please browse this list of delightful and bizarre picture books, check some out, and give them a read. You can read them to yourself or with a child.
I won’t tell. Picture books have something for everyone.