Sun-Shiny

What is the better course of action: pictures, or no pictures?
Books have pictures because pictures are extremely useful to keep the author and the reader on the same page (pardon the pun). When the Harry Potter movies came out many people said, “That’s just like I imagined it,” and many people also said, “I thought such-and-such would look differently.” When there are illustrations, sure readers are still making up their own world, but usually the author’s mind and the reader’s are meshed.

Pictures are not at all needed in books! It is like Belle said in Beauty and the Beast when to Geston, lack of pictures meant end of interest (see title): “Some people use their imaginations.” If pictures are necessary, that means the author is not doing a good enough job of describing. Of course, too much description gets mundane and that brings us back to pictures.

When I become engrossed enough into a book, I sometimes loose track of what is going on around me and become gripped by the people and the people’s life style in the book—their sounds, smells, sights, thoughts. In that case a picture would be distracting and maybe contradictory, but always totally unneeded.

I need only a little description and the rest of my mental picture comes from the important things that really make up a world: conversation, personality, events. Wordy description would be redundant if I already know the world by what is going on in it.

But then, pictures are really wonderful in books—illustrations combine two fantastic art mediums: written and visual. I love children’s books, and the main reason is that I love the pictures. Oftentimes pictures communicate in one glance what would take pages to describe, if it could be done at all.

I am reading a non-fiction book about Michelangelo. In the first chapter the author mentions the Pieta and David. After reading more about their creator and his history I was curious to look at these works again. But can you believe it, there were no pictures of them! In the center of the book there were color pictures of the Sistine Chapel (I think any book on Michelangelo that didn’t have a picture of the Sistine Chapel would probably be burned and then the ashes sent back to the editor to correct the obvious over-sight) but no David, and no Pieta. I was annoyed: I wanted pictures!

Pictures can help children just learning to read so that they comprehend. Pictures can also be distracting and destroy the powers of your own imagination. Lack of pictures can be blasphemy. Pictures are wonderful and words are magical, I just like books. Picture or picture-free.