Description
Book SynopsisAn innovative analysis of children's picture books from the interwar period in America.
Trade Review"'Deeply researched and richly illustrated, Suspended Animation foregrounds the crucial and contentious role of the children’s picture book in a conflicted twentieth century. It highlights the tug of nostalgic innocence against the complexities of industrialism, war, gender, and battles for ideological domination—with the stakes nothing less than actions and beliefs of the generation(s) of the future." —Cecelia Tichi, Vanderbilt University
"Lavishly illustrated, this panorama of picture books from the 1920s and ‘30s opens an expanse of brilliantly executed visual narratives that set the context for some of the most cherished landmarks of American childhood, from Millions of Cats to Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel. Much of the material we encounter in this book springs from a modernist New York between the wars, where experiments in drama, design, or dada had an impact on the design of picture books. Nathalie op de Beeck’s extended readings make us eager to explore the energetic, droll, technologically innovative texts for ourselves." —Margaret R. Higonnet, University of Connecticut
Table of ContentsContents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Here and Now Fairy Tales
2. Picture Book Ethnography: Representing the Other in Picture Books and Illustrated Texts
3. Sentient Machines: Lonesome Locomotives and the Mechanized Modern Body
4. Murals in Miniature: Regionalism, Labor, and Obsolescence
Postscript: The Picture Book After 1942
Notes
Index
