A picture book can paint a thousand words | Letters
Readers respond to a Guardian editorial on the power of picture books to fire adult imaginations as much as children’s
With reference to your editorial on the picture book (The Guardian view on the picture book: not just for children, 19 March), how have we managed, given the evolving economics of producing illustrated books, with so many books without pictures – knowing that a combination of words and pictures can be a powerful and beautiful way of telling a story, of describing our inner and outer worlds, and communicating with anyone, regardless of background, talents and education?
How would the story of anatomy have advanced without Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings? Imagine Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland without John Tenniel’s illustrations; to my mind, as memorable as Lewis Carroll’s text. Likewise, in the featured book, The Lost Soul, by novelist Olga Tokarczuk and illustrator Joanna Concejo, pictures and words work together in a symbiosis of intuition and logic, structure and form.
