Analysis of Illustrations in The Polar Express Essay Example

📌Category: Books
📌Words: 1276
📌Pages: 5
📌Published: 17 April 2022

The famous and well-known children’s book (and movie) The Polar Express, was written and illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg in 1985. The next year, in 1986, Chris Van Allsburg was awarded with the Caldecott Medal. This was not his first Caldecott Medal. He won his first Caldecott Medal back in 1982 for the hit Jumanji. Chris Van Allsburg uses oil pastels to illustrate his story. The book falls under the fantasy genre. The book takes place on the night of Christmas Eve with a boy deciding to go on a magical train ride adventure to the North Pole. The boy and the other kids with him get to visit Santa Claus and the boy asked for a silver bell from his sleigh. The boy rides home thinking he has the bell in his pocket, turns out he does not. Christmas morning comes and the last present the boy opens is the silver bell that rang. He believed in the magic of Christmas. Chris Van Allsburg himself also has some insight as to how he came up with the idea of his best-selling picturebook. In The Polar Express, Chris Van Allsburg (author and illustrator) emphasizes the significance of the silver bell and its connection to belief and imagination, and images that are done in detail with oil pastels demonstrate what the text is saying rather than solely telling the story. 

In the making of the great picturebook, The Polar Express, Chris Van Allsburg always starts with the text first. He comes up with a simple idea and makes it into something more. For this book, the simple idea was a train. In a piece about the thirtieth anniversary of his book’s publication, Sally Lodge quotes Van Allsburg as saying, “‘It was a vision of a train, an old iron steam engine with a few cars, standing still in a dark forest, illuminated only by the light from the empty cars,” he explains. “Snow fell heavily, and I heard, in my imagination, the crunch, crunch, crunch of footsteps breaking through the icy snow that covered the forest floor” (Lodge 1). A simple object or idea can lead to a more vivid and detailed story in pictures and imagery which is what a picturebook is all about. As for the words and images displayed in the book, they are “symmetrical,” a term defined in our textbook by Denise Matulka in A Picture Book Primer as a picturebook where “the words and pictures have the same meaning” (Hintz 197). The words and images have the same meaning, but the pictures themselves display more detail and imagery. There are specific artistic choices that go into writing a children’s book, specifically picturebooks, and why certain picturebooks are awarded the great Caldecott Medal. 

As mentioned earlier each of the illustrations were done with oil pastels which can enhance the theme or feeling of “belief” which is what children’s books are all about. This allows for Chris Van Allsburg’s work to be in vivid detail as result of blending and highlighting because of the feeling that Christmas and its state of believing of whom or what is real, and what is imagination is difficult to pinpoint, but they are nevertheless powerful. According to a book review on The Polar Express from Kenneth Marantz, “Colors are muted, edges of forms are fuzzy, scenes are set sparsely, leaving details to the imagination” (164).  When it comes to the minute and detailed oriented illustrations of The Polar Express, there is a page(s) that showcases Santa with his reindeer on his sleigh with his elves in the background (9-10).  There is a connection to be made here with Molly Bang’s design principles for illustrations for picturebooks. According to Molly Bang’s design principles, “The larger an object is in a picture, the stronger it feels” (76).  Santa and his reindeer are at the forefront of the image with his elves in the background. You cannot clearly see that those are Santa’s little helpers. They instead look like basic shapes or circles with white highlighting, but based on the context of the story, it is blatantly obvious that those are elves. 

Even though this story is technically in the fantasy genre, the overall theme of the story is relative to imaginative minds and what can be accomplished if you just believe. According to a book review published in The Reading Teacher by Livingston, “The illustrations are wondrous artistic interpretations that support the story line, yet straddle the border of reality and fantasy” (103).  Chris Van Allsburg and his illustrations do just that. For example, Chris Van Allsburg illustrates in The Polar Express is when the children are making their journey to the North Pole on a train (Allsburg 9-10). The illustration shows at the top of the page, the train going through the mountains. A train going through the mountains seems like a fantasy. It is important to take note of Chris Van Allsburg’s detail of including the Northern Lights in the background.  Molly Bang’s design principles can be implemented here. Molly Bang’s 4th design principle states, “The upper half of a picture is a place of freedom, happiness, and triumph; objects placed in the top half often feel more ‘spiritual’” (54). When discussing the same illustration, the train is at the top of the page. The train is heading towards its next destination with a cab full of children excited to meet the great Santa Claus and the North Pole. Added to Bang’s fourth principle is, “The bottom half of a picture feels more threatened, heavier, sadder, or constrained; objects placed in the bottom half also feel more grounded” (56). Also located on the same pages in the book, towards the bottom you see the darkness of the forest, the dark trenches of the mountains and shrubs. This leaves the reader feeling threatened of what in reality could be down there at the bottom of the treacherous mountains and into the forest into the great unknown. 

I believe the most important illustration of The Polar Express, is the last page with the silver bell from Santa’s sleigh. It is important to take note that this illustration is unlike any other page throughout the book. The rest of the book, the illustrations take up the majority of two pages with the text displayed on the columns of the page. The illustration with the silver bell however, is in the center of the page with a white background.  This can sum up one of Molly Bang’s principles perfectly. According to Bang’s sixth principle, “White or light backgrounds feel safer to us than dark backgrounds because we can see well during the day and only poorly at night” (68). Chris Van Allsburg really wanted his readers to focus on this silver bell as it is what carries the story. The silver bell not only symbolizes the imaginary belief of the world of magic, but as well as the joy and creative minds that many children possess, and adults tend to outgrow as they get older. 

I have learned a lot by looking at this book more closely regarding children’s literature. I have learned that there are reasons illustrators create the images they do. They each serve a purpose no matter how big or small the reason may be in context to the story. There are reasons why the pictures are big or small, how the artistry and detail are done, where the text is displayed and why. According to our textbook, Reading Children’s Literature: A Critical Introduction, “Reading picturebooks critically means being aware of the many artistic choices that are required in outing them together, down to the minute details of production” (Hintz 198). I look at this book differently from when I was a child, versus now that I am an adult. My innocence was still prevalent when this book was read to me as a child. As I am now an adult, now as a reader I see the quest the boy goes through and that every child goes through a stage of life where they are in doubt whether they want to believe or not.  I personally highly recommend this book to children and even adults to enjoy around the holidays for the sake of believing in something.

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