rhe implied vieir*r

The lmplied Viewer:

Some Speculotions qbout Whor Children's
Piclure Books lnvite Reoders to Do qnd lo Be.
Perry Nodelman

Usually, when we talk about how picture books affect the children
who read them, we talk about the form and content of specific books. We
enthuse over how a particular set of pictures will delight them, or we think
about whether they will be able to understand the visual style of an illustrator
or the diction used in a particular text. We wonder if depictions of certain
characters will encourage young readers to think in terms of gender
silereotypes, or we worry about the morals they might derive from special
tales. And of course, all of this is important. My own work as a scholar of
picture books explores a range of ways in which individual writers can use
semiotic and narrative codes in order to communicate specific meanings in
individual books. I know, not only that these books do convey meanings,
but that the meanings they convey are subtle and wide-ranging. Furthermore,
f mconvincedthatchildrencan access these meanings in all theircomplexity,
and both take pleasure and gain knowledge from doing so. We need only
be willing to teach them the appropriate interpretive strategies.

But in focussing on these matters, I've ignored a number of ways in which

picture books might affect child readers simply by virtue of the fact that
rhey are picture books. The mere act of looking at the pictures in this
particular kind of book requires a range of assumptions about it and attitudes
mwards it before one can even begin to make any sense out of it or gain
any pleasure from it.

These attitudes and assumptions have profound implications. They help to

shape our ideas about why we look at things (both pictures and the real
objects they represent), and what in fact, the visible world is: what it is for,
what it does, what it owes to us and what we owe to it. And in all these

vo! 1 ric 'l ;urie t00C C R tA r TA 23

 tfit ir;tpil*d vi*w,er

ways, the basic skills required for us to be able to respond

as expected to
any picture book contribute to our sense of who we are
and why we are
that way. In what follows, I consider what it means to
be a viewer of
children's picture books. what do these books invite one
to be, or to do, or
tothink?

The assumptions upon which I base my exploration emerge

from semiotic
theory whichdescribes systems of sigzs: symboric *uy, oF.o--unicating
informationi. According to Marshall Blonsky, '"The semiotic .head,,
o.
see the world as an immense message, replete with
signs that can and"y"ldo
deceive us and lie about the world's condition', (19g5, p.vii).
while words
and pictures are different media and communicate different
things in different
ways, both are sign systems and share the basic qualities of
siln systems.
signs tend to be arbitrary. They are representations of other
things which
they don't necessarily resemble. There's no reason, for instance,
that a
red light should signify the need to stop your car. It might just
have ri,eli
been a purple light, or a loud siren. consequently, signs
and the systems
they formcan communicate successfully only to thlse a."uay
irrpossession
of the knowledge required to make the not-necessarily-obvious
cinnections
between the sign and what it signifies. In an important sense,
and merely
in existing and being used, the signs themsetves impty someone
capable of
-*it the expected sense out of them. A red r#ic fight conveys, not
only the idea of danger, but also the conviction that someone
exists outside
itself capable of responding to it as intended someone who
- will be able to
decipherit successfully enough to be thinking about stopping.

Reader response critics speak of the 'implied reader, of

a text - a person
in possession of the knowledge and the methodology of thinking I
about
signs that allow an understanding of the text more or l"r.
as its speaker or
writer intended itn. Pictures, equally, can be spoken of in terms of
their
impltedviewer- someone in possession of the knowledge and methodology
of thinking about them that allows an understanding of the picture
more or
less as its creator intended it.

Pictures tend to be less arbitrary than written signs. A photograph

of a cat
resembles an actual cat far more obviously than do the letters
cA T, so
that it may seem a little less obvious that the implied viewer
of a picture
requires special knowledge in order to understand it. It is,
nevertheless,

24 tW[ArTA vai 'l no l june t00S

 rhe trnr;/ted vleiv*r

lrue. Anthropological literature describing early contact with groups

u nfamiliar with contemporary Euro-American civilisation frequently contain
rcports of people without previous knowledge of photographs or
rcpresentational drawings who could make little sense of the examples
lhcy were showniii. Meanwhile, my own college-level students, unfamiliar
with the conventions of expressionist art as used in, for instance, Diaz'
illustrations for Eve Bunting's children's story Smoky Night, often ask me
why the characters' faces are blue or purple. Not knowing the sign system
- not being the viewer these pictures imply - they interpret the information
the sign system offers about emotional states of mind incorrectly, as literal
infbrmation aboutthe actually visible world.

'l'he knowledge and the assumptions about the world and about people
e xpected of both implied readers and implied viewers move well beyond

,iust technical questions about knowing how to decipher a particular kind of

rign or convention or image. They also include a range of assumptions
nbout the reality the signs represent. Viewers won't be able to think about
what a picture of a cat represents if they don't know what an actual cat is.
'l'hcy won't be able to figure out that the cat is a friendly one if they don't
know how to interpret the shape of its mouth as drawn by the artist and
idcntify it with a human smile, or that it is a poor cat if they don't understand
lhc convention that clothing with patches sewn on in various places signifies
lhc wearer's poverty, or that it is a French cat because of the beret it is
rhown to be wearing.

liurthermore, the conventions of visual representation add further

inlbrmation for a viewer about how to understand or make sense of the
real objects depicted. Imagine, for a moment, a picture of a cat being
thrown from a second-story window. Someone knowledgeable about the
rignifications of certain styles of visual depiction will understand that
luughter is the appropriate response if the picture is in a cartoon style,
alurm if the picture is in a traditionally representational style, wonder if the
picture is in a dream-like surrealistic style. The conventional means by
which an artist or illusffator represents objects for us convey, notjust the
iclea or the appearance of the objects, but also, how we should think about
and respond to those objects.

eonsequently, one of the effects for children of looking at pictures and

picture books - particularly in the company of someone, a parent or a

v*l 1 l* 'l jur* !0il{i CR tArTA 25

 tlt t i r;tts i I *c! t i*w,er

teacher or another child, who already

understands the conventions of
viewing them - is to make a real viewer resemble
an implied one. once a
knowledgeable viewer gives us some ideas
about questions to ask about
and things to look for in pictures, the pictures
themselves contain the
information that will alrow us to make sense
of them in the terms the
illustrator intended. pictures thus encourage
us to become the viewers
they imply. They partake of what theorists
oiideology Jl,h"
of subjectivity - the ways in which the culture "onstruction
we ei'ist in encourages us to
think about who we are and the significance
of what we think and feel and
doi'. If we come to understand tt ut ttr" cartoon
of a cat is supposed to be
funny, and we find ourselves actualy looking
at the fictu.e and laughing at
it, we have become constructed by the pictuie
u, ,oi3""i, with a particular
understanding of when laughter is appropriate
- an understanding we share
with others who have accepted the convention that
this particular style of
visual depiction implies comedy and requests
ruognt"r. iriother words, and
paradoxically, we have accepted u, * und"rrtanJing
of who we are in our
most essentiar andindividual separate selves
,o-"tf,irrg- that
- identifies us
with the values and understanding of our l*g", g.*p

All of this suggests the potential danger of pictures

and texts. The readers
and viewers they imply might not be people
we approve of. The subjectivity
they work to construct might not be a suu.lectivity
we would wish for our
children orourselves.

And indeed, that is exactry the case in terms

of a wide range of adult
responses to specific children's books.
As I suggested earlier, we wor$/
about the messages being given orthe gender
assriiptions texts are making,
and so on - and that we do so simfly asserts
trre aegree to which we
worry about what the readers and viewers texts
and pictures imply and
the subjectivity they construct. Fortunately,
there are a number of defences
we can take against these specific acts of construction.
we can simply
(and' I think, dangerously) keep our children
away from the books that we
worry about - not buy them for our libraries, not
allow children access to
them at all. We-can, just as simply,_(and, I
think, just as dangerously),
assume that children naturally respond to
texts in u *id"
variety of different
ways, that they are what John Fiske, speaking
of texts of popular culture,
identifies as "active" reader/viewers
-a trrut tri"y parti"ipati in the meaning
- making process in ways that free them from ttr" rp.*riue intentions of
texts, so that we simply needn't worry about
what the texts imply their
26 {R[ArTA vcj j no l june ti]0S
 the implied vieiv*r

rcuders should be and do". Or we can, with more effort (and,I personally
think, more productively), provide children with the ability to ttrink critically
nhout what they read and view - to become more active readers than they
nright akeady be, to be aware of how texts work to influence them and
lhus resist the negative influences.

llut as I said earlier, my focus here is not on the specific content of particular
lxroks, but on the viewer implied by any picture in every picture book.
tJnless we want to deprive children of books altogether, this we cannot
nvoid. That makes it all the more important to become aware of the nature
of this generalised viewer. I will return to these rnatters after a look at
what that nature is.

l,ct me begin by exploring my conviction that it exists at all. Do all picture

books, just by virtue of being picture books, imply specific qualities or
lbrms of knowledge or attitudes or assumptions in their viewers? Why
rnightthey?

One reason they might is suggested by Marshall Mcluhan's decidedly

unfashionable but still stimulating ideas about the ways in which media of
communication shape the meanings of their content and the ways in which
uudiences respond to that content, famously formulated as "the medium is
the message." According to Mcluhan, " . . . any medium has the power of
lmposing its own assumptions on the unwary. Prediction and conffol consist
ln avoiding this subliminal state of Narcissus trance. But the greatest aid to
this end is simply in knowing that the spell can occur immediately upon
contact, as in the first bars of melody" ( 1 965, p. 1 5). We make assumptions
nlong these lines when we talk about TV turning its viewers into couch
potatoes, withoutreference to the actual content of the programming. While
Mcluhan's survey of the implications of various media in Understanding
Media doesn't cover children's picture books, it does allow the possibility
that these books do work to impose "assumptions on the unwary" just by
virtue of what they are.

So what might those assumptions be, and what do they suggest about the
inherent basic nature of an implied reader/ viewer? Let me outtne some.

I begin with some qualities picture books share with other forms of
children's literature. The impliedreader/vieweris achild- abrutally obvious

v*l 1 rlc 1 jr:ne t*0* C R f,A r'l A 27

 th* itnplix! vitw,er

fact, perhaps, but the obviousness masks a whole realm

of fascinating
assumptions about what children are or should be.
while different children,s
picture books make different assumptions about
their readers, all children,s
picture books make the common assumption
that their readers are children.
They take it for granted that the mersfact of their
implied readers, age
means those readers have qualities unlike older
human beings and like
each other, qualities that require the existence
of a certain kind of book to
suit their needs as children. For much of human
history in most cultures,
no such thing as a children's picture book existed
because no such thing as a child in need of that
- in part, presumably,
specific'sort of book
existed. so the existence of children,s picture books
iorpti", the existence
ofchildren as a specific, definable, and necessarily defineJ
sub,category
of being human.

Furthermore, the child who is the implied reader/viewer

of any children,s
picture book must know that- or at ieast be in
the process of learning it,
becoming conscious of the ways in which he or she
is cirildrike, understanding
what it means to be a child and understanding it
to be importaniknowledge.
Before you can choose to read a picture book or
ask to irave it read to you,
you have to assume that you might in fact be
a potential member of its
intended audience. parents and others often work
to foster exactly that
assumption in childr-en: "Here's a book just for you
!" children who accept
that such a book rs for someone just like them
then understand that they
are clildren.

Nor is being a child simply a matter of being young

. It is a matter of having
certain abilities or tastes or interests the abilities,
-
implied by the style, subject, and level of difficulty
tastes and interests
of the book which now
invites readers to imagine themselves as the specific
audience it seeks.
They are being encouraged to think of themserves
u. rruuing trrese needs
or tastes or interests not because they were born with
their or because
their parents have^them, but simply iy virtue of the
fact that they are
children, and therefore, childlike in the way the book
implies children are.

In addition to helping children to think of themselves

as being children, the
books also enco'rage them to understand that the
category ,."iild."rr,, i, *
exceedingly important one, a key issue always op"ritiu"
and never to be
forgotten in their relationships with other people,
both adults and other
children. we are a culture in which children as well
as adults know that

28 {RIArTA voi '! no 1 june ti]00

 rhe implied vleiv*r

brlng child means knowing that one is a child and therefore entitled to or
a
ailpested to behave in certain ways defined as childlike.

Thoao ways axe subtle and complicated - the books we offer children
,ClTor a rangeof ffierent ways of being childlike. Picture books, for instance,
lmply an audience of younger children, and help children to understand
thft early childhood is a time when stories must be told in short and simple
tcxtr and when pictures are necessary to make sense of the words. They
lmply that early childhood is different in quality from later childhood, when
longer books with fewer pictures become possible and appropriate. They
lmply, in other words, an idea of childhood as a time of development through
| rcries of discrete stages: the idea that people get increasingly complicated
ru they mature.

In order to become more complicated one must start out being less
eomplicated. Obviously, then, many of the qualities we define as childlike
lnvolve ways in which younger children are more limited than older children,
and all children are more limited than adults - less wise, less capable, more
prone to self-indulgence and more in need of certain kinds of adult control
and regulation. Children who accept theirresemblance to the implied child
rcader/viewers of children's picture books have been given the freedom to
bc less wise and more self-indulgent that adults are often allowed to be.

At the same time, though, they have been invited to understand how much
their limitations force adults to control and regulate and supervise them.
Thc implied reader/viewer of picture books knows, not just that the books
tg intended for specifically childlike readers, but also, thatthey are provided
for those childlike readers, not by other children, but by adults, adults with
tho best interests of children in mind. The mere existence of picture books
thon implies a world organized so that children need and can depend on
bonevolent adult intervention in, and supervision of, all aspects oftheir
llves-including their imaginative lives as influenced by the content of
ehildren's books. The books suggest in merely being there the entire social
ltructure that creates and shapes the nature of childhood as a position of
dependency for children in our culture.

The child reader/viewers I have just been describing are complex and
ambivalent, caught in a complex field of forces, pulled powerfully in opposite
dlrcctions. On the one hand, they are childishly free of adult standards of

v*l 1 r.i* 'l jule tli0* C R IAr.IA 29

ft"
 th* inpil*rl v"t*wer

behaviour, allowably amoral oranarchic since these are "childlike" qualities.

On the other hand, though, because they are childlike they must accept
adult supervision and conffol. On the one hand, they are childishly innocent;
on the other, they know they are childishly innocent, have been taught to
think of themselves as such, and know what childish innocence allows
them - a form of knowledge that surely qualifies and undermines the
innocence, since now the intuitiveness and spontaneity that define innocence
are not actually intuitive and spontaneous but instead, it seems, performed,
enacted by an actor who has leamed to play it in order to satisfy adult
expectations. This implied child reader/viewer is not so simple or
straighforward orunleamed as ourclichds aboutthe childlike might suggest.

The learning the implied reader/viewer possesses has yet other dimensions.
More generally, the implied reader/viewer of children's picture books, like
the readers ofall books, understands some basic conventions about books.
Books have a front and a back, a top and a bottom. The words and pictures
on the cover are separate from but related to the actual story itself, which
is found inside. The story at least in books in the English language, emerges
when a readerbegins at what we call the front (i.e., with the bound margin
on our left) and moves consecutively through the pages, and from left to
right and then top to bottom on each double-paged spread.

A reader/viewer who knows all this and acts on it appreciates some basic
principles of convention and order, and has a willingness to adhere to them.
The mere fact that a child can leaf through a book in the right order in
order to perceive a narrative within it then means that the child has come
to understand something about the rules and patterns that allow for social
intercourse and communication. We like to talk about children being free
and spontaneous and creative. The spontaneity and creativity ofany child
who knows and makes use of these basic facts about books has been
qualified by and governed by adults. Reading a book is inherently an act
that moves a reader/viewer beyond individual isolation and the freedom of
anarchy. A child who knows which way is up and reads books with that
way up is on the way to becoming a good citizenin a shared social reality.

It is ironic, then, that many children's books seem to be what Alison Lurie
calls "'subversive" - apparently celebratory of spontaneity and imagination
and the defiance of adult values and assumptions. According to Lurie, "the
great subversive works of children's literature mock current assumptions

30 {REATTA val i no 1 juna 200$

 the imPlted vielv*r

gfd Cfprees the imaginative, unconventional, noncommercial view of the

WOrld in its simplest and purest form" (1990, p.xi). But they can be so only
bf fgadOrg who have become conventional enough to respond to and
make
l€nrc Of the works more or less as intended. The supposed subversiveness
CruryCS Only once a safely conventional context has been established -
md tiiat, surely, dissipates any real danger to conventional values.

I ryOkO Oadier of a child exploring books in a certain sequence in order to

dlcOOvor the narratives within them. The implied reader-viewer of these
bOOke knows about narrative - knows what a story is. Most picture books
t3nd tO be stories, and imply a reader who knows and takes pleasure in what
I rbry is, in what it does and how it operates. once more, this reader both
kngW; and likes the satisfactions of order - in this case, the ways in which
ngtT1tlves organize events into a sequential cause-and-effect patbern and
brlng about a unified sense of completeness and closure that gives meaning
to Cctions and events. The ability to take pleasure in these organizations of
elp6rignce imply a more general commitment to meaning and order, and a
fligtrt tom the spontaneity and freedom of random anarchy that confirms
tha ways in which picture books bind readers to their communities. As I
rUggcsied before, only once this binding has occurred can an indulgence in a
3g1}biy containeO and now merely fictional spontaneity and anarchy be
allowed'
Once more, the "childlike" becomes possible (and allowable for children)
onty within the context of an acceptance of an adult construction of reality
Which dissipates the actual subversiveness of anti-social behaviour.

An acceptance of the patterns of narrative also binds children to history,

end perhaps to their very sense of what they are as individual beings. The
lndater pattern of narrative - the sequence in which a moment defined as
e beginning leads to a middle and eventually to an end - itself implies
the
ldeithat events can be usefully and satisfactorily explained in terms of
whAt caused them and how they then lead to others. That concept not only
Irrgenizes time's passage, but tends to become the shape by which we
Understand who we are. The idea that one can understand events in terms
of their place in a chronological sequence of events is the basis of all
tlevelopmental views of things in general. The idea that one can understand
onegeliby figuring out how previous events helped to shape one is central
to our current sense of what our individual personalities and very beings
nrc. Psychoanalysis, for instance, finds the sources and meanings of adult
hchaviour in the hidden events ofchildhood; and I have already spoken of

v*11 rlu'ljunc tlt{)il CRtAr'lA 3l

 how age-related theories of development encourage both adults and
children
to think of children as being too old for certain books they might
once
have
enjoyed, or too young for books they will one day get to. Knowing how
to
decode narrative structures places us in history *d historians,
of the world and of ourselves.
-uk". us

Furthermore, and equally important: a child who has that knowledge

and
takes pleasure in it - examines books in the order intended, seeks
out
stories and is satisfied by their sequencing and closure has become
-
consumer. The audience picture books imply, merely in offering
a
certain
forms of experience, are people who expect the reward of a certain
kind
of experience in return for a special kind of effort. Merely in being
and in
purporting to be attractive, picture books hold out the promise of pleasure
and profit to those willing to consume them.

That books exist to offer readers pleasure tells readers that they
deserve
to, even need to, be pleased. In other words: that the book exists
to fulfil a
need implies that the need exists that then must be fulfilled and
can rightfully
be fulfilled.In differenttimes andplaces, children were notencouraged to
seek enjoyment in stories and pictures or even, in more general
terms, to
think of themselves as people with a need or a right to inautge these forms
of pleasure. That so many picture books exist, that ttre/ are often so
opulently illustrated and designed, and that we encourage children
to take
pleasure in the delights they offer and to seek out yet more
books and get
morepleasure fromthem without any need to feel guilty about it-
all thJse
are evidence of the extent to which picture books imply an
entire economy
of consumption driven by satisfying one's urge to please oneself in
certain
ways understood to be satisfying.

Furthermore, the mere fact that picture books exist is flattering

for their
intended audiences. The books are often sumptuous, complex, expensive
- and they tend to be found in sizeable collections, in stoies and libraries
and even moderately well-off homes, for clearly, having just one
is not
enough, and the more the better. Indeed, current pedagogi"a theory
often
highlights the importance of providing children witrra specnum
ofpossibilitias
from which to make choices and thus develop their inaiviauai tastes
and
values. The message is clear: All of this is being done for you,
child reader,
to teach you, to please you, to make you happy, to heli you be the best
you can be. That means you and your right to take pleasure
are important,

32 {REATTA vai I nc 1 iune ?00S

 :he imPlied vieiver

llrnt plcasing you has been an aspiration of a whole range of people, writers
artd illustrators and publishers and librarians and parents. To become the
lrnplicd reader/viewerof these elaborateproductions is, inevitably, to develop
H Ftrong sense of one's worth and one's desert - to understand that one
rloan indeed deserve such elaborate attention and that wanting and getting
whnt one wants are good things.

Meunwhile, however, the impliedreader/viewer also understands that picture

Itrxrks don't just please: they also teach. One reads them to learn from them,
Io bceome a different and better version of oneself. In yet one more sense,
lhen, these books allow pleasure only in order to co-opt it and undermine it:
y.ru ffc being pleased, and you are allowed to be pleased; but you are allowed
only within the context of goals of seH-improvement, and so just to be pleased
h not cnough. You may take pleasure only if you also understand how shallow
ll is to want pleasure in and for itself, and are prepared to move beyond it.

Ollen, in fact, children's books contain stories which replicate this allowing
entl undermining of pleasure, and work to make their readers feel guilty
ebout the very pleasures they offer. These stories ask children to identify
with characters who are creative or spontaneous or adventurous (and,
F€rhaps, subversive), first, in order to enjoy the delights ofadventurousness
and spontaneity, and second, in order to learn how dangerous
stlvcnturousness and spontaneity are. The implied viewer of such books
dcvelops two intriguingly conffadictory ideas about pleasure: it's good and
bnd, healthful and dangerous, harmless and harmful.

'l'he two ideas tend to occur sequentially in texts - first the delightful
lndulgence in pleasure, then the dangerous consequences. But since so
nnny books follow this pattern, a child reader of a series of children's books
lr takcn back to the first stage and then moves on to the second again and
uguin. The reader/viewer implied by a number of children's picture books
lnkcn together is, then, like the comically deficient characters on many
Atncrican TV situation comedies, who delightfully indulge their vice or folly
Fltcl thcn become aware of how badly they have behaved and learn to move
bcyond it in each episode, and then, at the start of the next episode, are
alwuys right back where they started, being vicious or foolish in the same
delightful old way. These implied reader-viewers move back and forth
betwccn childlike folly and adultwisdom, between delightfrrl subversiveness
Hnd sane conventionality, but never seem to completely give up one for the

vr:l 'l r.ic 1 jr:rr* t00* C R tA r'l A 33

 tlt* irnpll*ct vi*w,er

other. These reader/viewers are, once more,

complex and ambivalent.

Part of the complexity is a consciousness of

incompleteness - of not being
finished yet. That there is a lesson to leam
-"*,
learned it - that you are not yet ail you can
that you have not yet
be or ought to be. The
incompleteness is confirmed by the master
narratives of development
discussed earlier. The ways in which our thinking
I
uuout rro*
what they are make childhood the crucible in wirich
f*pb become
udutt pJrrorralities are
shaped - and thul a mere stage along the way
to a more complete being. A
child is, then, mafleable, a subjecrin-f-gr"rr, u person
in the making but not
yet quite made. such beings exist in time,
and might change with it indeed,
mustchange, must always enterthenext stage, -
mustke"p onmouing r"r*rrJ.
Their sense of self must be q'alified by the knowledge
that they are not yet
the selves they should be and ideally ought to
hope ttiey will be.

Note, once more, the ambivalence. one the one

hand, this magnificent
book exists for me to enjoy: damn, I'm good.
on the other hand, the book
is about how someone like me turns out to be
wrong. or maybe it,s just
about things I don't know yet and obviously need
to know before I can be
a whole person. Damn, I'm not quite good
enough yet.

But before becoming too depressed by the confusion

of all this, I have to
acknowledge that it is my own character as
a reader - and also, I
egocentrically suspect, the character of the readers
implied by most literary
texts. These readers hope to be gratified by the
text's ability to please the
people they alre ady are, andthey want to
move past pleasure,io be unsettled
by knowledge that there are new things to know,
to learn to be different
t
and befter from it. I might go even rtn"r,
and say that this is, perhaps, the
ambivalent and eternally divided character demanded
of ali'members in
good standing of democratic societies, which
gives us the freedom to be
ourselves and please-ourselves only in return
foi tearning and acting on the
knowledge that our freedom must always take place
wiiirin the context of,
and be constrained by, the needs of other individuals
and of the whole
communities to which we belong. The basic assumptions
of children,s
picture books about their readers help to accommodate
the readers to the
opposing pulls of thoughtless (and possibly subversive)
sep-s'atisfaction
and communal understanding and ihe constraint
of individual desire it
inevitably results in that will define their lives
as adults.

34 f R [A rTA vat .i na 1 june t00S

 rhe tmplted vlelv*r

It appears to be no accident, then, that children's literature in general and

children's picture books in particular have come to exist specifically and
nuinly in the context of middle-class-dominated western democracies, and
help to create subjects comfortable with the nature of middle-class-
dominated western democracies as they have developed within the last
fcw centuries. It is hard to imagine a society of pure egotists or one that
wus totally repressive of individual desire developing a form so determined
both to gratify and to constrain, so unwilling to give up either pole of this
hilnteral ambivalence in the subjects it constructs. (And note how these
lwo impossible extremes, the totally repressible subject and the totally
lrrcpressible one, are mirrored in the two ideas about child reader/viewers
I rajccted earlier - the totally impressionable subject implied by censors,
thc safely active meaning-makers postulated by theorists like Fiske. Each
vlew equally fails to account for the inevitable pull towards the other in the
eulture that we occupy and that occupies us.)

So I'ur, the reader/viewerl've been describing is the one implied by children's

books in general. Now I'd like to look at some qualities more specifically
ttlutcd to picture books.

Plsture books contain pictures, and pictures imply a specific sort of viewer
merely in being pictures, a viewer unlike the reader implied by the words
of a tcxt. Compared to printed words, for instance, they offer a relatively
donsc sensuous experience. Pictures contain textures, colours, shapes,
llncs - a variety of things for the eye to respond to and be pleased by, for
thete aspects of pictures are and are meant to be pleasing in and for
thomselves, without reference to the meanings or objects they have been
llladc to represent. To look at, say, a patch of intense red is sensuously
Unusing without any reference to the apple or fire truck the patch of red
Ftlght be representing in a particular picture.

Bf cuurse, the colours and lines and shapes in pictures book do represent
Sher things - the red patch is indeed an apple or a fire truck, not just a
pltch of red. As I said earlier, pictures operate as a system of signs, and as
I try to show in my book Words About Pictures, every aspect of them
blpn to convey specific meanings to knowledgeable viewers. Their implied
Ulcwer knows these signs, has a conscious or unconscious awareness of
bOw they allow lines and colours on a flat page to convey ideas ofpeople
pluce and things. Such an implied viewer is caught up in and constrained

vol 1 nr: 'l jun* t00* CRtArT/t 35

 tit* inp!/*d v,i*wer

by the cultural understandings thatmake the visible worldmeaningful.

And
as Fredric Jameson suggests, "as sight becomes a separate
activity in its
own right, it acquires new objects that are themselves the produtt
of a
process of abstraction and rationalisation which strips the
experience of
the concrete of such attributes as colour, spatial depth, texture
and the like
..." (1981, p.63). To interpret sensuous information as a sign is to deflect
attention from it as a purely sensuous experience.

Nevertheless, the sensuous information which contains and conveys

absffacted and rationalised cultural knowledge has no choice
but to remain,
and to convey itself all the while it is conveying the cultural
knowledge.
The patch of red is still, whatever it represents, a patch of red. In
order to
understand what it represents, the implied viewer has no choice but
to see
it and to respond to it in and for itself as well as in terms of what it has
come to represent. According to the psychoanalytical theorist Julia
Kristeva,
that represents a path to liberation from the constraint of being
constructed
as a specific kind of subject placed within specific cultural
values: ,,it
is
through colour - colours - that the subject escapes its alienation
within a
code (representational, ideological, symbolic and so forth) that it,
as a
conscious subject, accepts ... The chromatic apparatus, like rhythm
in
language, thus involves a shattering of meaning it.
of difference" (1980, p.22r). so, too, it seems,-d
subject into a scale
do lines and shapes and
textures shatter meanings merely by insisting on being themselves.
The
very act of observing that which contains and conveys meanings therefore
undermines the meanings, just as the meanings undermine the pure
sensations of the containers in and for themselves. The impted
viewer,
who can and must both respond to the containers and perceive the
meaning
they contain, is, once more, puled in two ways, towards the meaningfu-l
and communal and constraining on the one hand and towards
the purely
sensuous and pleasurable and unconstrainedly anti-meaningful
on the other.
The implied viewer of picture books is a divided subject.

The division is confirmed by the fact that picture books contain

both words
and pictures. The viewer they imply knows not only what kind
of information
to expect from each of these two different media, each one requiring
from
those who would make sense of them a different set of assumptions,
but
also, how to put the information together into a whole. This includes
some
fairly basic strategies of meaning-making, such as, for instance, assuming
that the house we see in a picture accompanying a text about a house
is

36 C R IArTA vct J no 1 iune t000

 the tnplieti vteiv*r

ig}lg{l lhe housc thc text mentions - that despite the fact we have two
dlftrerrt :ignn lbr it in two different sign systems, there is just one house.
It flnt lneludes somewhat more sophisticated strategies, such as guessing
ftgnr the sppeorence of the house in the illustration information about its
tg€, llr ponriblc location in time or space as implied by its architectural
Sile, the relutivc degree of wealth of those who live in it, the possibility of
rilteonc being content to live in such a dwelling. The implied rcadeil
f l€wer ahu knows how to apply all this visual information to the situation
rrullhretl hy u tcxt - interpret the words and their implications in the light of
lnfonttatlon provided by a perusal of the pictures. Such a reader/viewer
lhett krtoWt how to be analytical, how to compare and combine information
hrf r rllffCrent $ources, how to make the implied sort of sense of a complex
llehl uf plmitrilitics, how to solve apuzzle (and to enjoy solving it). Children
Fllprntr6god to become such reader/viewers are becoming meaning-makers,
e*llvely engogcd in solving the puzzles.

Hul llrcre ir, unce more, a paradox, and a division: the mastery they develop
{r lxrrtle utlvcrs masters them, as they increasingly become able to realise
r.tlulirutr to the puzzles thatwerethe ones intendedbythe authorand illustrator,
l*trrrrre increasingly aligned with the subject the text intends to construct.

Menttwltite, the mere act of looking at both the words and the pictures in
grh'lttre btxrks in order to make meaning out of them adds yet a further
rlltnr.turiun to the implied reader/viewer. In order to understand both the
rvottlr nnd the pictures, we need to position ourselves at some distance
rrttrfly l'rom them: we can't make anything like the sense an author might
Itnvc intcndcd out of the words and/or illustrator out of the picture with our
ftulei tlre$scd firmly against the books they appear in. Marshall Mcluhan
ruggcrllr that "Psychically the printed book, an extension of the visual
fnr'rrlly, intensified perspective and the fixed point of view" (1965, p.172).
ll'thnt is true - and literally speaking, it is - pictures, even more intimately
r'nrrncctcd with the visual faculty, must do something similar. Both, then,
rerprire rcader/viewers to distance tlemselves from what they observe in
urlcr to observe it in what they will then consider to be a meaningful and
Iu't'rrrutc manner. Such reader/viewers will tend to trust the value and
vnlitlity of the detached, isolated point of view - and tend to mistrust the
vplue rtnd validity of what they perceive by other means - by touch, for
lirsinrrcc. They have become gazers; I will say more shortly about the
F('r,lt(rny of the gaze and the character of he or she who gazes.

v*l 1 r'r* I ir-iri* t*{}* Cli[Ar'lA 37

 tft* trn$$*rt v,i*wer

Younger children who have not yet developed that

trust in the gaze often
tend to scan picture giving equal attention to all parts of the picture
-books,
plane - and they often find interesting or unexpected details that more
experienced viewers miss completely. Experienced
viewers, who know
how to stand back and read the information in a picture
that suggests
perspective, and consequently, a focus on certain
objects within it
understood to be central what the picture is ,.reaily"
- uuoo, - tend to
interpret the discoveries ofinexperienced, unfixed
scarurers as errors: they
themselves know the one right way to view.

And the right way, merely in existing and in being right, establishes
hierarchies, priorities, centres and
-*gLr. The act
and establishing which of the group ofvisual objects"fi#;;
at apicture
it depicis is actually
its subject - the person, or the cat on the person's lap,
or the lamp on the
table beside the person, or the flower in the drapery'in
constructs the reader/viewer as conscious of and
the background -
operating within the context
of such hierarchies. such a subject views the worta pititically:
children
who can read and enjoy picture books have become
potitic ueings, conscious
of and seeking out the inevitably varying dispositions
of powei and interest
and attention in the world around thern

Yet they are, also, individuals with a consciousness

of their individuality,
their sefarateness from and difference from the world
around them.
According to walter J. ong, oral storytelling, which
takes prace in the
context of a shared experience as many listeners
become an audience,
tends to create communities. cultures in which
orar storyterling predominates
imply and therefore, presumably, tend to consist
orp"G who thin\ of
themselves primarily in terms of their place in
the community as a whole,
and who take little interest in the subtle distinctions
that make them unique
or just different from others. In order to read
a printed book, on the other
hand' one must separate oneserf from the community,
have a private
experience in.isolation from others. consequently,
cultures witrr print impty
and therefore, presumably, tend to develop indlviduals
conscious of and
interested in their separation from and differences
from each other.

Picture books can and do offer that isolated and individuality-building

sort
of experience to solitary reader/viewers. But the books
are often ."i'o uy
adults to children singly or in groups, and thus
can also support more
38 C R EArTA voj I no 1 june Q000
 :he tmplie} view*r

rlunrnunal forms of experience and self-perception. Furthermore, the

plclurcs can be viewed by more than one person at a time, although, of
G{rur$e, all the viewers must be positioned in front of the pictures and at an
eppnrpriate distance fromtheminorderto make something like the implied
$nfie out of them. So picture books support the relatively un-self-conscious
curtrmunity of oral cultures as well as the self-absorbed isolation of books
etrtuisting of nothing but print and read privately. They suggest, once more,
6 compromise between the self and the communal, possibly even an
enthivalent pull in both directions. Is the story just for you alone, or for you
ai n mcmber of a group? Are you most significantly yourself, or a part of
I community? Once more, a picture book viewer must feel both pulls at
onee - possess a divided subjectivity.

Flnully, the division is confirmed yet again by the human figures who appear
Itt thc picture in picture books, and the relationships those figures imply
bctwccn themselves and those who view them. Like the actors in a play or
I nrovie, they are there to be looked at. In many books they even smile out
0t u$, apparently conscious of and happy about the presence of viewers.
Whether they acknowledge their position or not, these figures share in a
tnmcwhat less aggressive form the invitation to voyeurism that John Berger
dlrcovers in both contemporary pin-up photographs and traditional European
palntings of nudes. Their implied viewer of all these pictures is a peeping
Iirrn with the right to peep, to linger over details, to enjoy and interpret and
make judgements about it. He or she is a person of great power in relation
t0 th$t which he or she views.

ln thc depictions of nude adults Berger talks about, the implied viewer is
lomcone quite different from the person being viewed: a male rather than a
Fnulc, probably a clothed male rather than a naked one (such clothed males
lometimes even appear in famous painting of naked women, looking at the
ltomon who look out of the painting at us as we view it), and specifically a
Fale with the right to view. As Berger suggests, then, the person in the
glcturc is defined in a power relationship with the viewer: men have the right
b hxlk, the power to hold what they see in their gaze; women are primarily
$at which men have the right to look at, a possession, something whose
plmary dutyis to look good andto be seen. Thenude andits implied viewer
&on sum up a power dynamic that defines what was the taditional relationship
gf men and women in the European civilisation that produced such paintings.
tldecd, a sizeable feminist discourse based in the psychoanalytical theories

vall rio'ljune !00ti {RtAr.lA 39

 th* inpjl*r{ *,i*w,er

of Jacques Lacan talks about women and others becoming ,,subject

to the
g*e" - at themercy of a more powerfrrl being whose power
is defined by
the right and ability to stand at some distance from
them and view them. In
leaming to become the implied viewer of picture books,
children simultaneously
learn to identify with the powerfi.rl gazer, and to
subject others to their gaze.
They leam to be in charge.

rn picture books, however, the viewer and the viewee,

the gazer and the
gazed at, are, in some important sense, the same
person. A child views a
child who represents him or herself, for we
children to see
"n"ourug"
themselves in terms of the characters represented
in picture book stories _
to identify with them in order to leam from their siories.
If children are
meant to see themselves in these pictures, then
they must imagine themselves
as having the power to gaze at themselves,
and to see th" as depicted.
on the one hand, they have the power of the gaze. on the"lu",
other hani, they
are subjectedto a gaze _ which is, strangely, their
own gaze.

In fact, picture books offer a repetition of the moment

Lacan defines as
the mirror stage; that moment in infancy in which
a child identifies itself
with its image in a mirror. At this point, the child, who previously
rived in a
seamless universe and made no distinction between
itself and other things,
develops an ego, a sense of self, and does so by
realising that there are
things outside it, such as the space around its imaie
in the mirror. The child
perceives it exists as a separate self only inside
a context which is rarger
than itself, and which makes it feel small in relation
to it. Once we identify
ourselves with the smaller versions of ourselves we
see in the minoi
therefore, we are always conscious of ourselves as
diminished, lacking a
wholeness we once had, eternally striving for it
and never achieving it.
The image constrains and constricts us as smaller-than-life
- representations
of children in picture books construct child viewers
who identify with them,
as the safely contained representations of subversive
anarchy in children,s
books contain children within adults ideas of the childlike.

Inevitably, furthermore, to be conscious of oneself in

terms of the imagery
of mirrors is to be divided. Lacan speaks of ,.the very
bipolar nature of all
subjectivity" (1977, p.10). A self is both that which trri'nt
s or views, the
separate detached consciousness, and that which
is being viewed or thought
about. I am that which sees myself as this: in demaniing and therefore
confirming this relationship in the number of ways I have
b"een describing,
40 {RIArTA vo! 'J no 1 rune p0*0

k
 the tmplies view*r

#rc bookr play their part in establishing what Lacan calls "an alienating
€6tlty" (p,4) built on what is only an "illusion of autonomy" (p.6). We are
Cnty what the plcturcs have encouraged us to believe ourselves to be -
d lnsvitnbly ronte how incomplete and illusory that is. We are free and
ru* fr€€,lutanomoug and consffained, isolated and enmeshed.

Bgt €f s€urrg, that can happen only for those whose subjectivity has been
mtruoted ru tho books invite. A child inexperienced in the language of
pFtUre mllht, for instance, look at a serious representational picture of
th3 hlllry eet snd laugh, or at a cartoon picture and cry-or even look at
f Fklul€ pf r chlld and not identify with it. Indeed, inexperienced viewers
afien hrve erg{rtly this sort of unintended response-one that an illustrator
*fut *odretl hrrd to convey specific information wouldprobably view as
in*+urlF, Meanwhile, children with the knowledge and experience to
ylct Ht lrnpllod might consciously or unconsciously refuse to do so, might
asllvely pertlcipate in making a different meaning that implies a different
renre nf thoir own subjectivity. These possibilities raise an important
quFrllon about the argument I have made here. How do young,
lFrperlencod viewers look at pictures? Are they in fact the viewers the
lrlslurcr ln picturc books imply?

I helleve oither that they are, or that they are in the process oflearning to
l€estte nr. Thcorists like Claude Levi-Strauss teach us that all artifacts of
a r:ullilre mnnifest and replicate their basic structures - that each of the
erilfectr contain a little or has some contrapuntal but still supportive
elrllorrrhlp to the central meanings and values of the cultured. As artifacts
tf $uf own oulture, picture books require and help to construct readers and
tlewerr who will take their place in that culture. That place may appear to
lc oplxultional to its central concerns, but if it's possible to take it publicly,
antl reurmmended as a desirable position to take by those ensconced
r:entrslly or marginally within the culture, then the apparent opposition is
lrntrullo tum out to bejustanotherwayof supporting thosecentral concerns.
Nn ullrr"r nubjcctivity is possible for the sane members of such a culture
httt rrxrrc version of the form of subjectivity picture books help to construct.

lf lltst'n true - and I find it hard to understand how it could not be true -
lherr llre sort of active participator in meaning-making postulated by Fiske
wotrkl huve to turn out to be less free from the constraints of our culture
tltntt rrright first appear. According to Fiske, his approach,

vcil 1 nc'1;unc t*$* {lltAr T/r 4l

 titt inpil*d t'i*wer

Instead ofconcentrating onthc omnipresent,

insidious practices ofthe dominant
ide?logy "" attempts to understand-th"
r"rxtances and evasions that
"r"'ryaoy
make ideolngy work so hard and so insisteniry
t'o itserf and its values.
This approach . is essentiary optimistic, ^ointoin
'. for it fini rn the vtgoi, ,ii"tii
the people evidence of the possibitity
oy *rni"horg, and of the "a "r
motivation to
drive it. (1989, p.20-21)

Iaccept the possibility of resistance, deny the

likerihood that the change it
allows actually threatens the dominantideology
in any serious way. A
community that conceives of itself as a site
of freeaom for its members has
to allow resistance to its dominant varues
- and
ways that prevent any real shift in those values
obviously, has to do so in
or the power structure they
support. The kinds of alternative meaning-making
Fisle describes are best
understood, I think, as allowable divergences
from dominant values, allowable
because they don't actually ir *y
r"riou, way threaten the dominance of
those values. The most cenffal and most paradoxical
of those values is the
idea that each of us is and must arways
be an individual, an ambivut"nt u"ing
essentially atodds withthe community we
essentially belong to, acommunity
that then survives exactly by requiring and
celebrating ou;r"^" ,lrni *" *"
resistant to it in ways that co-opt and absorb
true resistance.

we should not be surprised, then, that the reader/viewer

impried by picture
books is conflicted, divided, ambivalent.
As I suggested earlie., ourculture
of equally free subjects shTtng u singre space
isiievitably anJ necessarily
conflicted about insolubre_issues of separatio.,
-o t
and constraint. In rearning.low to look atpicture "o--uJrr, ""uo-
books, then, in becoming
the conflicted, divided,.ambivalent subjecl
they imply, ;hildre;;; merely
in the process of entering into the divisions, ambivalences and
"orifli"tr,
complexities of life as it is in our time. Their - and our - one chance of
changing that situation in any truly fundamental
way comes with the
development of an awareness of it, and particularly
or irr" ','uy, in which
our culture allows and at the same time p-olices
and defangs the making of
meanings that appear to threaten its dominance.

Notes
tL HT:1e"":r"::rlflll"^*:^:,^:"_:.{.S:"u*ion.tn.words About
*",:T:"*:::
pictures,(re8s, p.e_r0),

lx
are discussedmore ::f::_::poo'" ".iti.i,., -"r,ar,g,r,"
fully by Wolfgang Iser.
See'forinstance,mydiscussionofthesematters
".fr;;":il;;;:;;#;
rnwordsaboutpictures,(r9gg,p.10-16).
lv For more about construction of subjectivity,
,* .f rlro" ures of chdren,s Literature:,

42 f,RIArTA vat ! na 1 iune tt]*S

 rhe tm*lied vleiarcr

( leeo p,136-139),
t Whllo Flnke's ideas relate to texts ofpopular culture such as television and advertising,
lhey repreeent a view of the freedom ofreader/viewers frequently found in discussions of
ehlldron'r literature, and frequently used to downplay the significance ofimplied refers
tnd vl€wcrs. It's for this reason that I refer to it here.
tl Ldvl-$truuss speaks, for instance, of "the unconscious structures underlying each
Utrtltutlon and each custom" of a culture (1967, p.2l).

lelerences

Hetlet, J, 1972, Ways of Seeing, British Broadcasting Corporation, London; Penguin,

llnrmondsworth.
Fkrnrly, M, (ed) 1985, On Slgns, Johns Hopkins UP, Baltimore.
BUnllnl, B, 1994, Smol<y Night,Illus. David Diaz, Harcourt Brace, San Diego, New Yorh
und London.
Hrb, l, l9tg,l|nderstanding Popular Culture,lJnwitHyman, Boston, London, Sydney,
Wolllngton.
lret, W, 1974, The Implied Reader, Johns Hopkins UP, Baltimore.
lalterrn, lr, l9Sl,ThePoliticalllnconscious:NanativeasasociallySymbolicAct,CornelT
UR l0raca, New York.
Xrirlevn,J, l9S0,Desireinl-anguage:ASernioticApproachtoLiteratureandArt,ed,,l-eon
$, Roudiez, ColumbiaUP, New York.
l*rn, J, l9?7, 'The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in
Ptychoanalytic Experience.' in Ecrits: A Selection, tans. Alan Sheridan Norton,
New York and London, W. l-7.
I lvl Slrsurs, C. 1967, Structural Anthrcpology, Doubleday Anchor, Garden Ciry New
York.
I -urle , A , l99[ , DonT Tell the Grownups : The Subversive Power of Children's Literature,

Back Bay/ Little Brown, Boston, New Yorlg Toronto, London.

f,lcl,tdtan, M, 1965, Understanding Media: The Ertensions of Maq McGraw Hill, New
Yrrk.
ftfulelnun, P, 1988, Words about Pictures: The Nanative Art of Children's Picture Bool<s,
Unlversity of Georgia Press, Athens, GA.
ilsdtllmn, P. 1996, The Pleasures of Children's Literature,2nd edn, Longman, White
Pluins, New York.
th5, W,J, lgS2, Orality and Literacy : The Tbchnologizing of the Word., Methuen London.

fully Nodelman is a Professor of English at the (Iniversity of Wnipeg in Canada. He has

P*llthed ove r a hundred atticles on various aspects of childrm's literature in scholarly
gxmnl1 many of themfocussing on literary theory as a contertfor understanding boolcs
{aee{lhlrcn. Hc lnswriftentwoboolcs,Wods about Pictures: TheNanativeArtof Childrenb
F*,turt Books wtd The Pleasures of Children's Literature. He has written three novels for
lEmX ulults as well as co-authored a series of four fantasy novels for young adults,
€urrcnly Professor Nodelman is working on a theoretical book about thc generic charac-
Erl il I r r of c hl ldru n's fi cti on.

v*l 'i nn 'i irrlr* CR [-A r"T A 43