‘A Dragon for Christmas‘ is one of our most popular original children’s picture books, produced by Goldcrest Gallery and printed in the UK. While an adult reads the amusing and lively rhyming text, very young children can enjoy sharing the delightful pictures which help to tell the story. Young children rely on clear pictures to help them understand what is happening in a story. The text has to be amplified and explained in the illustrations of a picture book. With certain stories and non-fiction books this may still be needed beyond the infant school stage (5-7 years).
Original Pictures: The Characters
Illustrations of the characters can portray emotion, personality and action, without the need for description in the text. In ‘A Dragon for Christmas’, this is clearly shown in the picture of the three children introducing themselves to the “large green dragon”. The children are lined up in order of their ages and Tom, the eldest, gives a manly salute, Louisa manages a polite curtsey, and toddler Christopher John holds up his teddy to meet the dragon. In this one painting, we learn a lot about the children’s relative ages, style of upbringing and their friendliness towards the dragon. He himself is pictured as dignified and polite, explaining the phrase “terribly grand”.
Humour in the text may be supplemented by the illustrations in a picture book. The dragon’s amusing reply to the children, that he looks like their storybook dragon “excepting the nose”, is capped by their identical pairs of big, round eyes, and the imminent grabbing of his tail by Christopher John!
Original Pictures: Colour & Line
The illustrations in ‘A Dragon for Christmas’ are painted in watercolour, with pen and ink line. This gives a delicate but lively style. The children’s clothes are coloured in soft shades of the three primary colours: red, yellow and blue. Whenever the green dragon is with them in the story, this makes the illustrations look very bright. Young readers are usually quite familiar with these four colours, which helps to draw them closer to the action.
In the paintings that do not include the green dragon, secondary colours are used – browns, oranges, pinks and purples. They convey the quieter, more domestic atmosphere of the children’s ordinary, everyday lives. The vintage style and the Scandinavian theme are shown in the costumes, furnishings and decorative borders of these beautiful illustrations.
Published by LRM Books and printed in the UK. Available from Goldcrest Gallery.