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'The Artist and the Postmodern Picturebook’

As one of sixteen international invited chapter contributors to a book exploring emerging postmodern tendencies in children’s picturebooks, Salisbury is something of a lone voice here in putting forward the artist’s perspective. The other chapters come from academics in the field of children’s literature from around the world and all are examining postmodernism in the picturebook as a published artifact.

Immediately following the opening chapter, What is a Picturebook, Anyway by Barbara Kiefer (Charlotte Huch Professor of Children’s Literature at the Ohio State University), Salisbury’s chapter takes a look at the subject from the perspective of process, i.e. examining the making of a picturebook and the extent to which artists (or picturebook-makers) are conscious of, or in need of, such labels as postmodern. Professor Salisbury takes a rather contrary stand in arguing that very often the artist will have little interest in this kind of labeling and will be primarily concerned with making the book ‘work for the child in himself’, rather than in relation to any preconceived notion of audience or genre. Salisbury draws on his experience as an artist and on his research for his 2007 publication, Play Pen: New Children’s Book Illustration (Laurence King Publishing), in which many picturebook-makers were interviewed about their working methods and philosophies.

Looking at some less well-known picturebooks from countries with small populations but strong arts funding (e.g. Norway), Salisbury examines the relationship between artistic training and personal, emotional experience in picturebook creation. He questions the use of the term visual literacy by picturebook academics, which he sees as being used to describe a narrow ability to ‘decode’ visual metaphor into words. Salisbury argues that, just as literacy refers to an ability to read and write, true visual literacy comes from the ability to see and, more importantly, draw.