Is the Children's Illustrated Book really a Discontinuous Medium? How Children's Books Produce Sequential Momentum

The depiction of sequential momentum in children's book illustration is a form of visual communication where the artist takes a positive role in expressing narrative ideas, a role which has many similarities to the role of director. Sequential momentum is an expressive visual device that animates the narrative; it is primarily a visual tool, which is effective in depicting movement, drama and time in a static medium. In order to analyse the complexities of this, the paper will break down the notion of sequential momentum into three components and discuss how these components feature in the work of several prominent author-illustrators. The first of these components is action: the momentum of the image and the expression of frozen kinetic energy on the page. The second is time: how the image depicts a single moment or multiple moments in time. Lastly, the discussion turns to drama showing the intensity of the moment and the theatre of imagery that exists on the page. One might assume that expressing sequential ideas, through what has been referred to as a 'discontinuous medium' [McCloud, 1993], could be inhibiting, however expressing a moving story through a static medium demands a focus of conceptual direction by the artist. It challenges the artist to identify the very essence of an idea and then to express that idea using a multiplicity of graphic codes that iterate and reiterate the notion of momentum. The fictional world of children's books provide temporality and causality, where the audience can engage in expectations and an imaginative journey, which in the process of comprehension, is transformed into motion and becomes continuous.