Reading in color: children's book illustrations and identity formation for black children in the United States

African American Review, Spring, 1998 by Jacque Roethler

Schwarcz begins his chapter on the emergence of identity in The Picture Book Comes of Age by observing that,

throughout childhood, the individual's personality grows and expands. Slowly, yet forcefully, biopsychological processes, genetic inheritance, physical constitution, and life experiences lead the child toward a larger measure of consciousness of his or her own self and of independence.... The search for individuality includes many interrelated aspects.... the contemporary picture-book story attempts to entertain the child and to aid him or her by offering plots, relationships, and metaphors for the various facets of the search. (84)

The formation of identity is a crisis each of us must go through on our journey to adulthood. The separation from parents and the development of a code by which to rule our adult lives are very serious undertakings. Difficult as these processes are for all children, they are especially difficult for those of African descent in the United States. In addition to defining their adult character, they must define themselves in terms of their cultural heritage as well as their national heritage - African American as well as American - what W. E. B. Du Bois called their "double-consciousness" (45).

One of the ways in which black children in America create their schemata is through the illustrations they encounter in the literature to which they are exposed as children. Children, especially young children, are sensitive to illustrations. They concentrate on illustrations while another person reads to them, and they are subject to the impressions illustrations create. The images these children soak up remain with them for the rest of their lives. The importance of children's illustrations has long been recognized, but recognition of their importance as a force in the psychological growth of the child is a fairly new phenomenon.

Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment (1977) changed the way some scholars came to think about children's literature. Stories were no longer perceived as gentle things to while away the hours, as innocuous children's amusements, or as harmless vehicles for the formal education of children, as were the chapbooks of eighteenth-century England and America Though Bettelheim may have been haphazard in his application of Freudian principles and though Freudian concepts seem outdated in the 1990s, Bettelheim spurred the application of theories of psychological development to the interpretation of children's literature. Schwarcz is probably the first to apply these psychological concepts to the illustrations in children's literature, and his work reflects the ideas of those scholars who acknowledge the importance of visuality in thinking. He contends that psychologists "who investigate the role of art and other complex forms of visual communication are becoming convinced that visual perception is intimately involved with thinking. They postulate that thinking is not solely an abstract or verbal process but that it is tied up with sensory perception" (Schwarcz and Schwarcz 1). Schwarcz's interpretation of the value of illustrations to childhood development is more complex than earlier ideas because it takes cognizance of the psychological formation of children's personalities. Indeed, in describing his intentions in writing Ways of the Illustrator (1982), Schwarcz says that his "book is intended to contribute to the trend leading away from condescending appraisal or rejection, toward the examination of the illustrator's work as a means of symbolic communication" (4). Schwarcz sees in educational circles two separate attitudes vis-a-vis children and the appreciation of art:

There are those for whom the principal objective lies in leading the child toward being capable and motivated to take part in the art life of his place and time, to take in beauty, harmony, drama, joy, laughter, as they are presented and represented by the arts, and to make the child a willing future customer of the aesthetic phenomenon found in his[/her] society. To others, ... the aesthetic originates at existential, even evolutionary levels: man and woman have developed the ability to communicate and to be moved by symbolic forms, as part of their prolonged struggle to become spiritual beings.... Leading the child toward greater competence in aesthetic perceptions means aiding him and her to become more humane, to partake in his unique human heritage. (Ways 170-71)

Schwarcz concludes that the "good book and the superior illustrator can play a role in the realization of these processes" (171). Schwarcz repeatedly stresses the function of children's books and their illustrations as forces for "humanization": "Such is the nature of the superior aesthetic message that it influences the whole child.... it develops [the child's] self-perception and his[/her] comprehension of the world he[/she] lives in, his[/her] ability to understand his[/her] own intimate experience and to relate more meaningfully to others" (Ways 195). Far from being a peripheral thing, something which enhances life, children's books and their illustrations have the power, in Schwarcz's view, to influence the adult which the child will become.