Narrative map
This is a drawing found in the book 'Frou' (that's the name of the hare) originally published in French; a Père Castor book from the 1930s (though this English version is undated). It was done by drawing directly onto lithographic stone by Rojan (Feodor Rojankovsky), a brilliant illustrator of many of these books, which mostly recount stories about animals in their natural surroundings.
This isn't exactly a contemporary publication. My point is that the drawings themselves are diverse and highly inventive, including scenes, diagrams, maps of the narrative (like the one shown here) and comic-strip series of actions such as birds diving in the water… a precursor to all the original and instructive ways of conceiving of illustration found in many children's books today.
Comments
Thanks for sharing that. I found an old Rupert Annual at home recently, and was thinking about the diverse ways they deal with largely-visual narratives, such as haveing "footnotes" of secondary stories happening at once with the primary action.
There are also the maps in fantasy fiction, but I guess they are all later than the 1930s (e.g. maps of Middle Earth, and I think Narnia books have maps, not just ones done as a form of fanfiction)
have you looked at the Rupert books?
Posted by: alice | December 4, 2006 11:17 AM
No i haven't, they sound interesting -- a kind of comic strip?
The first time i read this, my mind saw 'Rathbone' rather than Rupert, a visual slip. The Rathbone books, produced over the late 50s/60s, covered various topics including sciences and maths with some history thrown in, and a lot of their illustrations are highly contextualised, for example the flat, diagrammatic perfect hexagon is sketched out by an ancient greek guy in robes. Kind of a personal, narrative approach to teaching sciences.
Posted by: Katherine | December 9, 2006 01:54 PM