Introduction to picturebook codes

Abstract

It is easy to be captivated by the lovable and endearing creatures that inhabit the modern picturebook. Whether our taste for picturebooks was formed by the work of Beatrix Potter¹ or by that of her distinguished successors, we know, even if we often disavow it, this infatuation with the image of her Mrs Tiggy-Winkle (a hedgehog), Mary Chalmers' Harry (a cat) or Cyndy Szekeres' Pippa Mouse, Ernest Shepard's or William Pene du Bois' bears, Clement Hurd's rabbits, or Bernard Waber's Lyle (a crocodile) and Arthur (an anteater). Disarmed, entangled in a net of affection, we are almost ready to eat, as it were, out of the handling of the illustrator.