Picture Books

Celebrate the Author: Chris Van Allsburg

I’m not exactly an expert on Chris Van Allsburg. My first acquaintance with him was The Polar Express, long before it became Hollywood fare. I think it was my mother, then a kindergarten teacher, who introduced me to the book when I was in college, and I thought it was great. After my daughter experienced it in her kindergarten class last year, though, I formed a different impression. It was read to the kids, then they made bells, then they watched the movie in class.

It bothered me then. First, my husband and I had watched the movie and decided to wait to let our daughter watch it. The whole business of the tramp ghost on the train roof seemed potentially scary, and really the movie took so many liberties with the plot as to be its own entity. Then she went to school and was shown the movie anyway. Second, when the kindergarten class worked with the story, it became an overt lesson in the nature of faith, one in which faith was simply “belief” without regard to whether the particular object of faith was a worthy one or not. We’re Christians, and we teach our children that Jesus rose from the dead, and that God hears our prayers. Here was the kindergarten teacher using this book to teach that Santa, too, was worthy of “faith.”

No, I’m not advocating book-burning. It gave rise to some good discussions (though sooner than I would have chosen if circumstances hadn’t forced it). On the whole it was an exercise in the power of stories — Van Allsburg’s stories in this case, and his wonderful visualizations — and their malleability in the hands of their readers. I still like The Polar Express; the reality that seeing isn’t believing, but rather believing is seeing, is an important one. But all objects of faith certainly aren’t equal. It’s a multifaceted book that lends itself to different philosophies.

That multifacetedness is evidence that it’s legitimate art, not simply a screen for a single didactic agenda. All the Van Allsburg stories I’ve seen are similarly suggestive. Another one I like is The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. It contains a set of unrelated pictures, all done in black-and-white, and all with Van Allsburg’s trademark suggestiveness. Each picture contains a story title, and one line of a story. The reader’s job is to supply the rest of the story. (Follow the title link to see the pictures.) It’s really a wonderful imaginative exercise that takes students a step beyond picture narration, and into story creation. I’ve had the book since I was in college and (I admit it) I’ve pored over the pictures many times with admiration for Van Allsburg’s detail, inventiveness, and skill at depicting mood and atmosphere. These qualities explain why he’s the author I picked for the June Celebrate the Author Challenge. I learned from this book that he never learned to draw as a child, and felt he was no good at it. I’m glad he knows better now.

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