Graduation Year
2025
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
English
Reader 1
Colleen Rosenfeld
Reader 2
Oona Eisenstadt
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2025 Eli F Protas
Abstract
When we teach children how to read, we start with picture books. We do this despite the fact that picture books blend visual and verbal storytelling in ways that require nuanced understandings of both elements. Rather than studying these aspects individually, a complete picture book analysis relies on examining the intersection of words and images, how they interact structurally and how each lends meaning to the other. To understand how to better close read picture books, this thesis turns to the stories of Maurice Sendak, a picture book writer and illustrator whose work redefined the relationship between words and images within the genre and established the form of the modern picture book.
By examining Where The Wild Things Are, In The Night Kitchen, and Outside Over There I study how Sendak engages the space of the page as an element of setting and manipulates borders and framing to create a sense of movement between worlds. His interplay of words and images, including contradictions between the two and layouts that alternatingly privilege one over the other, demonstrate the difficulty of close reading a medium that relies on a shifting balance between two forms. This thesis approaches the question of how to close read a picture book by deconstructing the work of an author whose narrative, stylistic, and formatting conventions have laid a groundwork for modern picture books.
Recommended Citation
Protas, Eli F., "Maurice Sendak’s Trio, And What Good Picture Books Have To Say" (2025). Pomona Senior Theses. 363.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_theses/363
