Illustrations

Illustrations - Direct Relationship between Word and Image Example of a wood engraving illustrations that accompanies one of the stories Excerpt from the Preface written by the author: ﻿“[The author] has become deeply impressed with the powerful influence of illustrated story-books upon the young. That influence, of course, will be good, or otherwise, according to the character of the books. If the illustrations are grotesque caricatures, and the stories vulgar and silly, however much they may amuse the young, their influence must be injurious to their taste, if not to their moral feelings" (3-4) Bullard, being extremely involved in Sunday school and the religious education of children, believed that every part of a children’s storybook had to be good and moral because a child is very easily influenced and forms his most basic ideas about the world at a very young age. Bullard wanted every child, even those who could not yet read, to be able to learn and gain lessons from his books, so every short story is accompanied by an illustration. Not only do these illustrations pertain to the story, it seems as if Bullard either hired artists to make a print for his stories, or visa versa, he based his stories off of prints he saw. This is to say, there is a direct relationship between word and image in Bullard’s book, and this serves to further enforce his message to a wide variety of readers.

An example of the correlation between word and image from a story in the book: ﻿“Our fine picture gives us an example of enticing to evil. Here are two school-girls. We will call them Sarah an Ellen. They are just out of school. You can see the low country schoolhouse back of them, near by. They have seated themselves under those large trees; and Ellen is on her knees, trying to coax Sarah to do something that is wrong. She is enticing her. Perhaps she is trying to get her to stay out of school, to run away from home, to go off with her berrying, or something of the kin" (17).

 The image depicts two properly dressed girls sitting under a tree. One girl turns away shyly while another girl tries to entice her into eating something in her basket. Not only does Bullard tell a story that accompanies the illustration; he references the image and uses it to tell the story.  HOME