Suspended Animation: Children's Picture Books and the Fairy Tale of Modernity

Abstract

Nathalie op de Beeck's Suspended Animation provides a fascinating historical survey of the evolution of the picture book in the United States during the early twentieth century and especially between the world wars. Tracing how the picture book reflected the ideologies of the interwar period, op de Beeck argues that picture books developed a “fairy tale of modernity” that ran parallel to the experimental and avant-garde work of well-known modernist authors (p. xvi). Unlike other studies of picture books that seek solely to examine the aesthetic nature of the texts or their historical contexts, this book seeks to combine the historical context with an aesthetic discussion to understand certain trends in picture book publishing. This study is also unique in that it explores the material production of picture books to situate them more fully within their historical context and within the history of picture book publishing practices. Op de Beeck masterfully discusses picture books with which many readers will be familiar from their childhoods and makes them new with her three-pronged historical, aesthetic, and material approach, revealing insights about the books and how such books influence both child and adult readers.

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