Picture This: How Pictures Work

First published in 1991, Picture This: How Pictures Work starts with a question: "How does the structure of a picture... affect our emotional response?" In the revised and updated 25th-anniversary edition of her work, author and illustrator Molly Bang uses pictures made of cut construction paper to attempt to answer this deceptively simple question.

Bang begins by illustrating the story of Little Red Riding Hood in its utmost simplicity, probing into how variations in shape, color and placement make viewers feel when each are seen in the context of the well-known fable. These reductive, over-simplified illustrations prove Bang's ultimate conclusion on the relationship between pictures and emotions. "We see pictures as extensions of the real world," she writes.

Picture This is as much a lesson in understanding pictures created by others as it is an invitation to improve one's own craft. Beautifully designed, with simple colors and words placed carefully to emphasize the illustrations they are meant to describe, Picture This will delight any artist, art aficionado or reader of picture books. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm