Creating Depth in Children’s Illustrations – Books for Keeps

“Shirley Hughes once talked to me about depth in children’s illustration. She was a great admirer of Edward Ardizzone because you could ‘walk into’ his pictures in your imagination. Each was a scene that beckoned you to enter. She thought there were two directions to think about in the making of a picturebook. One was the direction through the book as you turned the pages .... The other was the direction into the book through each image so the reader had the feeling of going behind the surface, as if climbing out of the stalls onto a stage, or stepping through the wardrobe into Narnia ...”