Why are we passionate about this genre? Picture books by nature are performances, and all participants have an essential role. There’s the author and illustrator (sometimes the same person playing different parts). There are editors and designers working hard behind the scenes to make sure their efforts are invisible. There’s the reader and listener, maybe a parent encircling a child with the book on her lap, or a teacher holding a spread aloft. Then there’s the book itself, a still object that spurs the child to action: pacing the page-turns, “reading” the pictures, voicing a soundtrack, acting out scenes, and especially, using the power of imagination to fill in the spaces.
Picture books live on, in the physical world and in our psyche,
ever ready to be performed again. And that is a joyful thing.