The Novelle

It is almost an unspoken rule that illustrated books are for children and for children only. If you find yourself in your adult life reading book with illustrations, then you run the risk of being looked down upon as a juvenile individual who probably can’t handle reading anything substantial.

I sometimes find myself on public transport reading an illustrated book and feeling embarrassed by it; if people see the pictures, will they think I’m childish? I often try reading very discreetly or not at all when I’m reading these books in public, and something about that does not feel right.

No matter what book you are reading, you are reading, and if it happens to contain pictures, it doesn’t make you any less of a person than one with facts and figures.

Illustrations are the perfect way of enhancing your reader’s knowledge of the world that you are creating. It adds another level to the story, and sometimes when things are hard to imagine, it pushes the reader in the right direction. Sometimes it works the other way around; the reader imagines the world in their own way and takes a look at the illustrations to see a physical interpretation of the scene. It’s often interesting to see the differences in imagination, and this shouldn’t be looked down on, as everyone has their own personal takes on every book they have ever read.

Illustrative books such as graphic novels have a big popularity among older people, especially seeing as a lot of the scenes in them are meant for the older reader. I don’t think a lot of people see these as illustrated picture books, as they tend to define them as two separate entities; but with all that said they are what they are, books with pictures in them. People don’t tend to judge graphic novels as much as they do to other books with illustrations, and I’m curious as to why.

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld has the most beautiful illustrations created by Keith Thompson. Thompson’s images are deep, dark and haunting, and they assist the writing in creating a mood and setting the scene. The pictures were, in a way, what encouraged me to continue reading as I was looking forward to seeing what scene the illustrator would show us next, and if it could get any more fabulous than the last. I can definitely say that I was never disappointed. These drawings should be seen as an alternative insight, not a childish fantasy.

Over the years, I have learnt not to care what people think with regards to what I am reading, as I believe reading to be quite personal. The illustrations in these books are an added aspect that doesn’t take anything away from the writing as a whole. To say that illustrations are childish is probably more of an insult to the writer than it is to the reader.