Playfulness in Lauren Child’s Picture Books

Authors

  • Suzanne O'Sullivan

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21153/pecl2008vol18no1art1182

Keywords:

Lauren Child, picture books, playfulness

Abstract

Lauren Child is the author/illustrator of thirteen picture books, four board books and three novels, most prominently the Clarice Bean series and the Charlie and Lola series.1 She has been feted as ‘one of Britain’s foremost children’s writers and illustrators’ (Booth 2005, p.13). As Rose notes, ‘people rave about how clever the stories are, how the drawings and design are quirky and refreshingly different’ (2006). Child has won numerous awards, including the Kate Greenaway Medal (for I Will Not Ever Never Eat a Tomato) and the Smarties Prize (for Clarice Bean, That’s Me; What Planet Are You From, Clarice Bean? and That Pesky Rat).

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Author Biography

  • Suzanne O'Sullivan

    Suzanne O’Sullivan is a children’s book editor. She has an MA in Children’s Literature from Macquarie University.

References

Barthes, Roland (1981) ‘Theory of the text’ in Robert Young (ed) Untying the Text: A Post-structuralist Reader. London, Routledge, pp.131–161.

Booth, Hannah (2005) ‘Profile: Lauren Child’ Design Week 28 July 2005: 13.

Brown, Gillian (1999/2000) ‘Child’s play’, differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 11.3: 76–106.

Child, Lauren (1999a) Clarice Bean, That’s Me. London, Orchard Books.

——(1999b) I Want a Pet. London, Frances Lincoln.

—— (2001a) I Am Not Sleepy and I Will Not Go to Bed. London, Orchard Books.

——(2000b) I Will Not Ever Never Eat a Tomato. London, Orchard Books.

—— (2001b) What Planet Are You From Clarice Bean?. London, Orchard Books.

—— (2000c) Beware of the Storybook Wolves. London, Hodder Children’s Books.

Child, Lauren (2002b) That Pesky Rat. London, Orchard Books.

—— (2002c) Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book?. London, Hodder Children’s Books.

—— (2003) I Am Too Absolutely Small for School. London, Orchard Books.

——(2004b) Hubert Horatio Bartle Bobton-Trent. London, Hodder Children’s Books.

——(2007c) Charlie and Lola’s Numbers. London, Orchard Books.

——(2007d) Charlie and Lola’s Opposites. London, Orchard Books.

Doonan, Jane (2001) ‘At the cutting edge: Picturebooks by Sara Fanelli and Bruce Ingman’, Signal 96: 181–198.

Edwards, Brian (1998) Theories of Play and Postmodern Fiction. New York, Garland Publishing, inc.

Goldstone, Bette (2008) ‘The paradox of space in postmodern picturebooks’ in Lawrence R. Sipe and Sylvia Pantaleo (eds) Postmodern Picturebooks: Play, Parody and Self- Referentiality. New York, Routledge, pp.117– 129.

Hans, J. S. (1981) The play of the world. Amherst, MA, University of Massachusetts Press.

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Mallan, Kerry (1999) In the Picture: Perspectives on Picture Book Art and Artists. Wagga Wagga, Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University.

Mistacco, Vicki (1980) ‘The theory and practice of reading nouveaux romans: Robbe-Grillet’s Topologie d’une Cité Fantôme’ in Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crossman (eds) The Reader in the Text. Guildford, Princeton University Press, pp.371–400.

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Pullman, Philip (1989) ‘Invisible pictures’, Signal 60 pp.160–186.

Rabinovitch,Ddina (2003) ‘Author of the month: Lauren Child’ Guardian 24 September 2003. http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/childrenandteens/story/0,6000,1048732,00.html Accessed 21/6/08.

Ridge, Judith (2003) ‘Interview with Lauren Child’. http://www.misrule.com.au/laurenchild1.html. Accessed 21/6/08.

Rose, Hilary (2006) ‘Child’s Play’, Times Online 21 October 2006, published online at <http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article606327.ece>

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Wyile, Andrea Schwenke (2006) ‘The drama of potentiality in metafictive picture books: engaging pictorialization in Shortcut, Ooh-la-la, and Voices in the Park (with occasional assistance from A. Wolf’s True Story)’, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 31.2: 176–196.

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Published

2008-06-01

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

“Playfulness in Lauren Child’s Picture Books” (2008) Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature, 18(1), pp. 48–54. doi:10.21153/pecl2008vol18no1art1182.

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