First Pictures, Early Concepts: Early Concept Books

Bettina Kummerling-Meibauer, Jorg Meibauer

The Lion and the Unicorn, Volume 29, Number 3, September 2005, pp.
324-347 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/uni.2005.0039

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/187697

[131.130.169.5] Project MUSE (2024-04-11 21:18 GMT) Vienna University Library

 324 Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Jörg Meibauer

First Pictures, Early Concepts:

Early Concept Books
Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Jörg Meibauer

The earliest picture books read to children are filled with pictures of
common objects—such as a ball, teddy bear, apple, chair, or dog—
printed on cardboard, plastic, wood, or cloth pages. Their titles may refer
to implied users (For Our Child, Baby’s First Book), depicted objects
(First Things, What Is That?), or the books’ pictures (First Pictures,
Pictures for the Little Ones). Sometimes the title stresses the act of
seeing (Come and See!, Look!) or that the book or objects belong to a
young child (My First Picturebook, That Is Mine). These books usually
do not contain much text, often just a single word denoting the objects.
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The images are color drawings or photographs in color or black and

white. Such books circulate widely. We believe that all children in
Western cultures are familiar with one or more books of this type when
they are about twelve months old.
The most common term for this type of book is “baby book,” which
correctly indicates that they are for young children. The term baby book
sometimes refers to most books for young children, from simple board
books to complex I-Spy books; it is too general a term for the scope of
this article. Maria Nikolajeva and Carole Scott use the term “exhibition
book” as it focuses on the act of exhibiting things (How Picturebooks
Work 6). A more suitable term seems to be the Danish notion “pegebog”
(pointing book), which stresses an important aspect of the routine of
picture book looking (Christensen 21). We would like to propose a more
specific term: the early concept book.
This phrase seems appropriate as the pictures displayed in these books
are vehicles to support the child’s acquisition of early concepts, such as
apple or ball. A concept comprises the knowledge that the child needs to
be able to refer to a given thing or entity. This process is intimately
connected with the acquisition of pictorial and literary competence.

The Lion and the Unicorn 29 (2005) 324–347 © 2005 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
 First Pictures, Early Concepts: Early Concept Books 325

Few researchers have shown serious interest in this book type. Marilyn
Apseloff and Perry Nodelman (21–35), and Gunter Kress and Theo van
Leeuwen (21–33) have made some promising attempts, but even Colin
Mills’ “Books for Younger Readers” and the pioneering accounts of
Dorothy Neal White in Books Before Five, Dorothy Butler in Babies
Need Books, and Nicholas Tucker in The Child and the Book hardly take
early concept books into consideration. Their lack of narrative structure
and static representation of everyday things seem to be reasons for the
neglect of this book type in picture book theory.
A closer look reveals that early concept books have prominent
relatives. Johann Amos Comenius’s Orbis Sensualium Pictus (1658) and
Friedrich Johann Justin Bertuch’s twelve-volume Bilderbuch für Kinder,
Picture Book for Children (1792–1830) are similar in that they display
pictures of everyday objects. However, those books were intended for
school children and convey an encyclopedic knowledge of the world.
Early concept books focus on young children and their environment.
They probably originated in the last two decades of the nineteenth
century. For lack of space, we will not venture into the history of early
concept books.
Our present study draws on a small corpus of twenty early concept
books from our private collection. These books come from Western
countries, with the oldest from 1890. Generally, early concept books are
not registered in many bibliographies of children’s literature, with the
exception of art historian Albert Schug, who noted seven early concept
books in a 1988 catalog of an exhibition of five centuries of children’s
books (12). Early concept books published before 1950 are now rare
since most were damaged by frequent use and not saved.
The outline of our study is as follows. To make the object of our study
more accessible, we describe three outstanding early concept books that
display characteristics of this type. We then discuss important visual
properties of early concept books, stressing the by no means trivial
character of the pictures. Next, we show some of the more important
linguistic aspects of early concept books. Finally, we focus on the role of
early concept books in the acquisition of literacy, venturing that they
have more to do with literature than initially perceived. While we rely on
theoretical sources from picture theory, linguistics, and literary theory,
we do not presuppose a fixed theoretical framework. Such a framework
does not currently exist and is a task for the future. Our analysis is guided
by the belief that a developmental approach, one that reflects the growing
cognitive abilities of the child that emerges from rich interactional
settings, will be most fruitful for the study of children’s literature.
326 Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Jörg Meibauer

Three Early Concept Books

Three outstanding early concept books will serve as examples; we will

point out their commonalities and differences. The books we will
consider are the Swiss-German Mim Chindli. E neus Bilderbuech für die
ganz Chline, To My Child. A New Picture Book for the Little Ones,
(1923)1 by an unknown illustrator; the American The First Picture Book.
Everyday Things for Babies (1930) by Mary Steichen Martin and Edward
Steichen, 2 and the German Erste Bilder, First Pictures (1973)3 by Dick
Bruna, a Dutch artist.
Mim Chindli contains eighteen pictures in the following order: ball,
drum, cake, apple with knife, scissors with pin-cushion, reel of thread,
needle and thimble; brush with comb, ribbon and hair slides; soup cup
with spoon and slice of bread; coffee grinder and coffee beans; hammer,
pliers and nails; shoe; cherries with a wasp; plate with two sausages, fork
and knife; key rack with keys and padlock; candlestick with matches;
glass, medicine vial, sugar lumps and fly; eggcup, egg, spoon and salt
cellar; basket with vegetables; and washing bowl with soap dish, soap
and sponge. Printed on heavy paper, each double spread consists of an
empty page on the left and watercolor illustrations on the right. In
contrast to late nineteenth century and early twentieth century picture
books by artists—such Elsa Beskow, Walter Crane, Kate Greenaway, or
Ernst Kreidolf—who use light colors, the illustrations in Mim Chindli are
dark with brown and grey tones. This reflects the illustrator’s realistic
approach since most of the depicted objects have brownish and greyish
shades in nature. The objects are framed by a subtle, sometimes
interrupted, black outline. The background is a light brown surface,
representing a negative space. Shadows create three dimensionality.
Most of the pictures are scenes of two to five objects arranged like a still
life, alluding to that artistic form. Figure 1 is a typical example of the
book’s pictures. A child’s shoe is against an empty background. Usually
a pair of children’s shoes are shown in this type of book. The side view
emphasizes the shoe’s form. The shoe’s laces are tied; one end hangs
down, the other disappears inside the shoe. Light reflects on the tip of the
shoe, its side, and on the shoelace. Shading is marked by cross-hatching.
The shoe and its lace cast a shadow on the ground. The shoe is framed by
a wafer-thin black line; the shoelaces and inner rim have black outlines,
too. This realistic depiction stresses the object’s importance. Children must
focus their attention on an everyday object that adults may take for granted.
Edward Steichen’s The First Picture Book, with a preface by his
daughter Mary Steichen Martin, was influential in the development of
 First Pictures, Early Concepts: Early Concept Books 327

Figure 1. Shoe. Illustration from Mim Chindli. E neus Bilderbuech für die ganz
Chline (To My Child: A New Picture Book for the Little Ones) by an unknown
illustrator (Zürich: Rascher & Cie, c. 1923)

photographic books for young children. Praised by Barbara Bader as “the

first of the modern photographic books” (100), Steichen pioneered this
book type, stimulating similar texts. These include First Things. A
Picture Book of Objects (about 1940), Paul Macku’s Schau mal! (1949),
and Erich Retzlaff’s Das erste Bilderbuch (1949). The book’s sensibility
reflects a simplicity and purity of style, reminiscent of New Realism,
which dominated photography at that time. This contrasted with the
earlier Pictorialism, which was characterized by representation of objects
“as they are.” Steichen wrote in A Life in Photography that he intended to
produce “realistic still-life photographs of the objects that a young child
could recognize as part of his life” (11). Mary Steichen Martin writes in
the foreword of The First Picture Book that the objects should be
“presented as ‘objectively’ as possible,” (3) alluding to the recognition of
photographs as different from illustrations. While she assumed that
illustrations are subjective, she claimed that photographs are objective
and neutral representations. This is not always the case, as will be evident
in analyzing Steichen’s work.
The First Picture Book consists of a series of twenty-four black-and-
white photographs of ordinary objects. The photographs are shown on
 328 Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Jörg Meibauer

the right pages, the left pages are empty.4 The realistic photographs are
printed on art paper in a fine, halftone process. The objects are arranged
aesthetically. Generally, they are shown as single objects, sometimes in a
scene, like a still life. Most objects are against a white or black
background, but sometimes they have a realistic background, such as a
carpet. All the objects have light reflections and shadowy surfaces, but
those on a black background do not throw shadows.
Figure 2 is typical of the photographs in this book. Three sheets of
paper of child’s scribbles and a pencil are lying on top of each other. The
objects are against a black background, which contributes to their
isolation. Light reflections are on the pencil, while shadows are discern-
ible on the sheets. Even if the objects are static, their composition evokes
a kind of liveliness and spontaneity, as if a child pushed them apart
afterward. The sheet at the top is not presented as a whole object since it
bleeds into the edge of the photograph. This photograph shows an image
within an image, creating a meta-image with the scribbles on the sheets
of paper.
This analysis contradicts Steichen’s claim of objectivity and neutrality
of the photographs. Every photograph involves some degree of subjec-
tive choice through selection, arrangement of objects, photographic point
of view, lighting, and framing. Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida
differentiates between the denotative and connotative meaning of photo-
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graphs (6). The photo denotes certain truths, providing documentary

evidence of objective circumstances. Photography connotes specific
meanings that rely on cultural and historical contexts of the image and its
viewer. Despite subjective aspects of the act of photography, the aura of
machine objectivity clings to photographic images. This is a central
tension of photography.
Dick Bruna is a widely known illustrator of baby books published after
World War II. With an abstract style and bright colors, he revolutionized
this book type. His numerous books for young children have been
marketed worldwide. Typical is Bruna’s Erste Bilder, with a standard
book format, constructed of heavy cardboard impregnated with plastic.
The book has ten pictures: flower, truck, blocks with a little figure, dog,
cat, bucket, ball, umbrella, sun, and two birds sitting on a twig. Two
pictures face each other on the doublespreads. The objects are character-
ized by bright, primary colors. The hue is consistent, without modula-
tions. Each object is framed by a thick, black contour line. According to
Perry Nodelman, these thick outlines reflect influences of Russian and
Polish artists who came to Western Europe and North America in the
1920s and 1930s (31).
 First Pictures, Early Concepts: Early Concept Books 329

Figure 2. Paper and pencil. Photograph by Edward Steichen from The First
Picture Book (New York: Fotofolio, 1991; first published 1930). © 1930, 1958.
Reproduced with kind permission by Carousel Research Inc. on behalf of
Joanna T. Steichen.

Figure 3 shows Bruna’s abstract style, which stresses stereotypical

features of the respective object as well as pictograms known, for
example, from computer games and road signs. Essential details are kept
to a minimum; for example, a child’s joy is portrayed by just an upturned
mouth. Placed almost in the middle of the page and against a vibrant
yellow background, the ball is just a circle in heavy black outlining,
colored in white, red, and blue. A thick, black line separates each color
from the adjacent color. The object does not cast a shadow. The ball
stands out flatly against the clear, monochrome color background.
Because they are abstract, several pictures are ambiguous. A little
figure could either be a child playing with blocks, or a doll, or a fairy tale
dwarf. Other pictures, such as a black cat, can not be easily recognized
since the animal is reduced to a large head with two little ears, green
eyes, a red nose, and whiskers. The head merges smoothly into a strangely
formed part of the body, which is meant to represent the cat’s front legs.
These three early concept books give an initial impression of a variety
of objects and artistic style. Only a ball can be found in all three books;
but other objects—such as blocks, brush and comb, buckets, or shoes—
330 Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Jörg Meibauer

Figure 3. Ball. Illustration from Erste Bilder (First Pictures) by Dick Bruna
(Ravensburg: Otto Maier Verlag Ravensburg, 1987; first published 1973).
© 1969, Mercis bv. Reproduced with kind permission by the publisher.

are depicted in two out of three books. The objects can be categorized.
Toys are found in all three books. Two of the books contain objects from
the categories of food, household items, hygiene articles, clothes, dishes,
and furniture. Animals, another popular category in these types of books,
are in one of the sample three. While Mim Chindli shows a naturalistic
approach, Steichen’s photographs reveal the influence of New Realism.
Bruna’s abstract style is connected to pictograms and continues to
influence early concept books.
Most of the man-made objects—such as balls, shoes, dishes, or
dolls—have changed through the years. For instance, balls differ by size,
color scheme, and pattern. The changing fashion of clothes and shoes
reflects their cultural history. When are these objects important enough to
put in early concept books? In older concept books, objects such as a
coffee grinder, drum, or ribbon are often shown, but not in later books.
Objects such as a computer, television, and cordless phone replace them.

Visual Features of Early Concept Books

Although these three early concept books differ, they also have striking
similarities. A compilation of the essential features of early concept
 First Pictures, Early Concepts: Early Concept Books 331

books is necessary to a better understanding of the visual constraints of

this book type. In general, everyday objects that are of interest to young
children are depicted, such as toys, clothes, and food. One object is
usually featured on each page, but sometimes two to five objects
constitute a scene. The objects are usually represented in their entirety, as
a whole object, never in its parts.5 An exception is some photographs in
Steichen’s The First Picture Book, such as the previously mentioned
photograph with the sheets of paper. In this case, just small edges or
small parts of the represented objects are cut off so that the object’s
recognition is not difficult. A black line usually frames the object so that
it stands out distinctly from the background and is shown either from the
front or from one angle. A view based on a central perspective is avoided
as well as a perspective from below or from above so as not to confuse
the young child. In general, the viewer is at eye level with the object.
A difference in color scheme is discernable among early concept
books published before and after 1960. The older concept books are
characterized by a demanding coloring with modulation of colors,
shades, and a large color range. The objects in modern concept books are
characterized by bright and rich colors with a dominance of primary
colors. The hue is consistent, and modulations of color are lacking. These
are in accordance with the cognitive studies of Marc H. Bornstein,
William Kessen, and Sally Weiskopf; and C. L. Hardin and Luisa Maffi
who have all proved that these aspects correspond with the color
preferences of young children. Infants prefer elemental colors, which are
classified as prototypes of the respective color, whereas they react to
modulations of color only later in their development. Saturation and
brightness characterize prototypes of color so the color is neither too
dark nor too light.
The depicted objects—contrary to the everyday environment of the
child—are usually clean and intact, as if brand-new. By contrast, the
shoes in Steichen’s The First Picture Book are used and slightly worn. As
Nodelman suggested, the tendency to present undamaged and clean
objects might be derived from the moral purpose of early concept books,
which reflect a disciplinary training by stressing order, neatness, and
brightness as desirable qualities (34).
Surrounded by empty unicolored backgrounds, with the exception of
several photographs in Steichen’s work, the objects seem to float in a
negative space. Movement is not shown. The objects are always static.
Objects in modern concept books are often shown without shadows or a
source of light that are essential for the representation of depth. Even if
the objects in older concept books are usually depicted with light
reflections and shades, the pictures’ three-dimensionality are reduced by
 332 Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Jörg Meibauer

the empty background. The proportions are striking. The objects are
much smaller than those they represent. Because the background is
empty, a sense of proportion is unclear. Objects seem to be the same size,
even though they may have different actual sizes; a chair is bigger than
an apple.
A concise description of early concept books reveals that objects in
these books are not shown naturally. The actual objects are not outlined
in black, nor are they in bright rich colors without modulations. They do
not have just one surface or seem to float in an empty space. Because of
this stylized representation, most of the modern concept books can be
characterized by a certain degree of abstraction.6 Whether this style is
appropriate to the imperfect pictorial perception of young children
cannot be determined, due to the lack of studies. The supposed simplicity
of pictures in early concept books turns out to be problematic since even
these show an astonishing complexity.
Adults give young children early concept books assuming that pictures
can be understood more easily and directly than words. We want to show
that the understanding of pictures requires a knowledge of competencies
that have to be acquired. To understand that an image, which seems
simple and straightforward, is complex and artificial one must remember
that all pictures demand some kind of interpretation simply because there
is no picture that contains as much visual information as an object. This
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leads to the conclusion that even young children must possess some
abilities when interpreting pictures in early concept books. Four basic
skills of perception are necessary to understand these images.
Children must learn to distinguish a figure from the background. They
have to realize that the depicted object is relevant, rather than the
unicolored background. The world flows past in a succession of half-
perceived images, but here children must focus on one object. This
tendency is underlined by framing objects with a black line and the
emptiness of the background. Children are guided to focus their attention
on the objects whose contours are emphasized by black lines. Black lines
around depicted objects also appear in coloring books to mark objects to
be colored; the background serves as a negative space, as in early
concept books.
Another basic skill is realizing that lines, points, and colors have
meanings insofar as they are inseparable parts of the depicted object,
even if, in reality, it is not outlined in black. Lines do not just separate
figures from ground; they can do more, such as suggesting textures or
darken colors. Artists also use hatchings and light reflections, which
indicate a source of light and shadows. These artistic techniques are
conventional. Children must learn how to read them in artwork. Nodelman
 First Pictures, Early Concepts: Early Concept Books 333

assigned them to the “catalog of the codes, conventions, assumptions,

and interpretation strategies implied by baby books” (35).
Inexperienced viewers, then, must be able to understand that two-
dimensional pictures stand for three-dimensional objects. This process
demands the recognition of the pictures’ similarity to objects in the actual
world. Based on experiments by cognitive psychologists, children recog-
nize pictures as representations by at least nine to twelve months. J.
Deloache, M. Strauss, and J. Maynard have shown that five-month-old
children can recognize relatively abstract pictures of objects (77–89). K.
Roberts and F. D. Horowitz confirm experimental evidence that by nine
months children can recognize images in two-dimensional form as
representations of reality (191–208). Children younger than two years try
to pick up objects from books; for example, they try to take out an apple
to bite it (Bloom 178). Young children realize that they have to
distinguish between illustration and represented object. Ideal picture
characteristics for young children at each development phase have barely
been studied. Factors such as color, or whether the art is an illustration or
photograph, play important roles in interpreting images’ meanings.
Finally, a young child must acquire a knowledge of learned visual
schemata. They must recognize similarities between real and depicted
objects. The transmission process, which occurs with actual objects and
pictorial representations, requires the ability to differentiate between
qualities and understand the objects’ prototypical properties.
These four essential skills demonstrate that pictures comprise visual
codes—a term used by Kress and Van Leeuwen—which must be learned
like the rules of verbal language (22–23, 32). Further skills, such as a
comprehension of perspective, could also be studied. Children must learn
these visual codes before they can make sense of pictures. By looking at
early concept books, children are encouraged to assimilate these conven-
tions; they have to acquire a sort of visual grammar. Psychological
research in picture reception shows that at an early age children develop
a surprising ability to use and understand elements of visual grammar.
The ability to interpret visual messages and produce one’s own mental
imagery is described as visual literacy. Visual literacy is not innate; it is
acquired by a permanent process of learning (Goldsmith 111).7 Viewing
pictures also challenges verbalization.

Linguistic Aspects of Early Concept Books

During language acquisition, the acquisition of words is vital as they are

related to structural aspects of a language. Words help represent sur-
roundings and inner states. Every child builds up a lexicon. A child’s first
334 Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Jörg Meibauer

words are learned by about one-year-old. By eighteen months, most

children have a repertoire of fifty words. From about age two, the lexicon
seems to explode; children acquire new words daily. Some researchers
estimate that by age six, children possess a vocabulary of about 14,000.
How they master this formidable task of learning the words of their
language is the object of recent research in lexical acquisition (Bloom,
35, 39–44). We believe that early concept books, at least in Western
cultures, play a specific role in lexical acquisition. On one hand, children
typically learn words by listening to people talk. They do this through a
process of “fast mapping” (Bloom, 26–35). There is no systematic and
explicit instruction through parents or peers. When an adult looks at a
picture book with a child, the learning situation is different. This is
demonstrated in this dialogue between a father and his daughter Katrin,
who is seventeen months old:
Daddy: Oh, what is that part. for an animal?
“Oh, what kind of animal is that?”
Katrin: For an animal.
“Kind of animal”
Daddy: What is that part? [points to the picture]
“What is that?”
Katrin: Crocodile
Daddy: A crocodile. (Wagner and Wiese 14, translated from German).

While playing this pointing and naming game, the adult asks the child
what the picture shows; the child has to answer correctly. If the child
gave the wrong answer, the parent might correct her. This pattern is
variable and extendable; for example, the child or the adult might make
animal noises. If children make mistakes, they are corrected. Looking at
picture books helps children in vocabulary acquisition. This is in line
with usage-based approaches to language learning suggested, by Michael
Tomasello in Constructing a Language.
Katrin knows that the depicted object is called a crocodile. What is
unclear is whether she is already able to obtain from this particular
picture and generalize about all crocodiles and whether she already has
some knowledge about crocodiles.
The process of acquiring the meaning of a single word is complex. We
will look at the word apple in detail because pictures of apples seem standard
in early concept books. In a more systematic and elaborate fashion, the
relevant aspects of the word apple may be illustrated as in figure 4.
We assume that children know a word when they have acquired a
consistent mapping between form and concept. A form-concept mapping
is called a lexeme, an element permanently stored in the child’s mental
 First Pictures, Early Concepts: Early Concept Books 335

Figure 4. Relevant dimensions of the lexeme apple.

lexicon. (There are other elements in the lexicon besides words, such as
idioms). A concept is the set of properties of a lexeme that makes
reference to a referent possible. The referent (or denotatum) is the entity
a speaker refers to while saying a lexeme. When saying, “This is an
apple,” the speaker refers to a specific apple. Characteristics of an
APPLE are that it can be eaten, is a fruit, is round, has a stem, grows on
trees, and is red, yellow, or green. Conceptual knowledge allows us to
categorize things, to decide whether a given object is correctly referred to
with the lexeme apple or not. Conceptual knowledge gradually develops.
Even adults may have difficulties categorizing a fruit as an apple
versus a tomato. Research in prototype semantics has shown that
prototypes, the best examples of a category, are crucial for categoriza-
tion. A chair seems to belong in the category “furniture” rather than a
bench, and robins are in the category “bird” rather than penguins (Taylor,
38–55). In language acquisition, prototypes seem relevant for conceptual
development and lexical acquisition (Murphy, 317–84).
In categorical hierarchies such as “furniture,” “chair,” “kitchen chair,”
the category of “chair” is prototypical. Categories belonging to this
salient level are basic-level categories. These are more accessible than
other categories, and seem to play a prominent role in lexical acquisition
(Clark 51). Before learning the words kitchen chair and furniture, the
child probably will acquire the word chair.
Pictures are two-dimensional visual representations of referents. Pho-
tographs depict a concrete referent, while drawings depict a prototypical
referent. We make a further distinction between a picture and a mental
picture. A drawing depicts a red apple, but an individual may mentally
imagine a yellow apple. Knowledge of a concept and of a mental picture
 336 Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Jörg Meibauer

are independent. There is conceptual knowledge without pictorial knowl-

edge. Examples are pictureless cultures or when children have not yet
seen pictures of referents they know. It is also possible to have a mental
picture without the knowledge of a referent. This is true for entities
exclusively represented through pictures, such as a unicorn.
While looking at early concept books, the child obviously acquires
concepts and related mental pictures. This is why we would like to
propose the term “early concept book” as a more adequate and specific
term, rather than “baby book” or “exhibition book.”
In regard to the relation between the referent and the picture, the
following four learning situations may be distinguished:
1. Child already knows the referent and can recognize the referent in
its visual representation.
2. Child already knows the referent, but is not able to recognize the
referent in its visual representation. This may happen when a picture is
highly abstract or in unusual colors. An example is a yellow circle on a
red background in Erste Bilder. It may be interpreted as an apple, ball,
sun, moon, or cheese, as our daughter once suspected.
3. Child knows the picture (or the pictorially mediated mental picture)
before seeing the fitting referent. This is typical with animals.
4. Child only knows the picture (or the pictorially mediated mental
picture), but cannot recognize an item with just this knowledge.
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What types of pictures are found in early concept books, and are there
linguistic explanations for these choices?
In the following table, we have listed pictures in twenty early concept
books, published between 1890 and 2000, and organized them into
conceptual classes. The objects are ranked according to their frequency
of appearance in the twenty books. Almost all early concept books have
balls. This survey is far from representative, but it gives a good
impression of typical objects.

Frequent Pictures in Early Concept Books

food: apple (12), banana (5), egg (5), bread (4), milk (4), orange (3),
roll (3), cookies (3), cherries (2), cabbage (2), cake (2), carrots (2), salt
(2), water (2), pears, pretzel, sweets, strawberries, coffee beans, cocoa,
pepper, plums, red wine, grapes, sausage, sugar lump
toys: ball (18), teddy bear (11), blocks (10), doll (9), animal to pull
(8), train (6), car (6), stuffed animal (6), bucket (5), wooden cart (4),
rattle (4), spade (4), jumping jack (3), doll’s carriage (3), toy duck (2),
rake (2), wooden animals (2), spinning top (2), pull toy (2), drum (2),
tricycle, watering can, marbles, doll’s clothes, doll’s furniture, rocking
horse, ship, sieve, musical clock, pinwheel
personal hygiene: comb (7), brush (6), sponge (5), soap (5), soap dish
 First Pictures, Early Concepts: Early Concept Books 337

(3), toothbrush (3), hair slides (2), ribbon (2), bathtub, brush, washbasin,
toothpaste, washing bowl
clothes: shoes (14), mittens (2), hat (2), cap (2), pullover (2), socks
(2), trousers, bib, coat, pajamas
dishes: bowl (11), mug (10), spoon (10), eggcup (5), silverware (4),
glass (4), milk bottle (3), knife (2), salt cellar (2), penknife, cup, teapot,
soup cup
household items: telephone (5), basket (3), umbrella (3), bunch of
keys (2), clock (3), flowerpot (2), vase (2), bucket (2), saucepan (2),
scissors (2), bowl (2), matches (2), thread, watering can, hammer, coffee
grinder, broom and dustpan, coins, candlestick, nails, needle, purse, lock,
matchbox, torch, hot-water bottle, pliers, pincushion, thimble, padlock,
key rack
animals: cat (4), dog (3), fish (2), bird (2), duck, fly, rabbit, chicken,
cow, pig, wasp
furniture: crib (5), high chair (4), coat rack, wooden bench, lamp,
table, children’s chair
vehicles: car (3), train, plane, pram, ship
other items: pacifier (4), book (3), flower (3), watch (2), tree, letters,
house, toddler, medicine bottle, package, sun, pencil and paper, black-
board, newspaper

The early concept books Mim Chindli and The First Picture Book are
unusual in that they have more than ten pictures, most books have less.
This may be because of restricted cognitive capacities of young children
or lower production costs. Authors seem to strive for a mix of pictures
representing objects that belong to different conceptual classes: the
concentration on just one conceptual class—cars or animals—would lead
to a different book type.
Some objects have a meta-representative quality. The picture may
represent a toy animal, which, in a simplified way, represents a real
animal (Moerk 549). Sometimes pictures are ambiguous representations of
a real or toy animal, such as the dog in Bruna’s Erste Bilder. Many objects
have pictures on them, such as a cup with a picture of a chicken on it.
Based on this list, it is tempting to argue that the illustrators make
proposals as to what should constitute a prototype for the child. An apple
may be a prototypical fruit even for an adult, but a crib is certainly a
prototypical furniture only for a child. This is similar to the prototypicality
of shoes and telephones. In addition, it seems authors do not always
represent basic categories. For example, a high chair is not a basic
category, although it is relevant to a child. There is some evidence that
authors try to give conceptual information that is interesting from a
338 Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Jörg Meibauer

child’s point of view. Of primary interest are things in the immediate

surroundings: food, toys, and animals. Category labels, such as Food and
Toy, do need not to represent the child’s own categories; for example, it
may be that children subsume Ball, Apple, and Eggs under the label
SPHERICAL (cf. Elsen 235–38).
Early concept books depict objects. Typical properties of inanimate
objects are already known to babies (Bloom 94–95). Early concept books
typically do not show people. The only exceptions we have found are two
early concept books illustrated by Hermann Wernhard. In Das ist meins,
That Is Mine (1971), a young child with a spoon in a right hand and
clasping a teddybear with the left is on the cover. Some of the child’s
clothes and objects in her hands are repeated as single illustrations in the
book, a reference to the book’s title. In contrast, Mein erstes Buch, My
First Book (1988) presents an infant with pajamas on the last doublespread.
In both cases, the adult and the young child will probably refer to these
pictures with the word baby, a word that presumably belongs to the
child’s early lexicon as a basic level category term.
Concepts depicted in early concept books probably are good candi-
dates for young children’s lexicon. This seems to be the case that Esther
Dromi documented in Early Lexical Development by describing Keren’s
Hebrew vocabulary between ten months and eighteen months. By ten
months, Keren‘s vocabulary contained the words puppy, car, and shoe.
By age fourteen months, she knew apple; by age fifteen months she knew
teddy bear and by age seventeen months cup and comb (171–79).
It is not a coincidence that the objects are labelled through nouns
because it is the linguistic function of nouns to denote objects. In general,
properties are denoted by adjectives and actions by verbs. Nouns play an
important role in the early lexicon. According to research by Christina
Kauschke and Christoph Hofmeister on early lexicons in German, there
is a continuous increase of nouns during early lexical acquisition. In their
corpus, noun types are ten percent of the total vocabulary by thirteen
months, fifteen percent by fifteen months, and twenty-seven percent by
twenty-one months. Children know many more parts of speech at twelve
to eighteen months; for example they learn personal-social words (yes,
hello, thanks), relational words (there, again), and onomatopoetic words.
(Kauschke and Hofmeister, 737–40). However, the concepts associated with
these words are not easily depictable, at least not in early concept books.
Children also have problems with context bound references, overex-
tension, and underextension. Children overextend a word’s meaning, if,
for example, they use dog to refer not only to dogs, but also to cats,
lambs, and cows. Underextending a meaning occurs when, for example,
 First Pictures, Early Concepts: Early Concept Books 339

children use the word bear to refer just to a specific teddy bear (Barrett
372).
Early concept books tell children that there is a conventional, adult
usage of expression that they should adapt. If an apple will repeatedly be
called apple, balls should probably not be used for apple. The informa-
tion about concepts is encoded in the pictures. Nodelman observes that
stereotypical pictures “operate somewhat like dictionary definitions of
objects—they express the essence of the type of object represented rather
than the specific nature of any given one such object” (27). If this is
correct, there is a correspondence between the prototypicality of the
depicted object (the apple) and the prototypicality of the way the object
is depicted (a picture of an apple).
When early concept books are read by children and parent together,
children acquire concepts that are pictorially mediated. They enlarge
their vocabulary that refers to objects in their surroundings and learn to
avoid mistakes.

Early Concept Books and Emergent Literacy

How does reading together support literary acquisition? Reading aloud is

a common interaction between children and adults during preschool
years. Looking at the depicted objects, pointing to them, and naming is
typical with early concept books. Early concept books have neither plot,
character, or dialogue. A text-picture relationship is missing. The se-
quence of pictures in early concept books does not necessarily tell a
story, which is even typical of wordless picture books. Early concept
books seem to be of interest for studies on visual literacy and language
acquisition, as has been noted by Apseloff and Nodelman. Because these
books do not have a story, these researchers do not consider early
concept books an important contribution to emergent literacy.
Apseloff characterizes early concept books as “learning toys” (64),
midway between a book and toy, while more complex books for young
children are called “pre-literature” (63). According to Apseloff, pre-
literature should fulfill five conditions: (1) introduction to the book
format, (2) stimulation of imagination, (3) beginning of a narrative
through verbalization, (4) variety of illustrations, and (5) intimate
closeness between adult mediator and child (63). Only the first condition
is said to be relevant for early concept books. Although Nodelman
considers the early concept book as part of picture books, he denies its
literary status on the basis of three arguments: (1) the attention to “book
rules” is not significant, (2) early concept books do not tell a story, and
 340 Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Jörg Meibauer

(3) they merely consist of unconnected images (23). Apseloff and

Nodelman decisively differ on the importance of book rules. While
Apseloff stresses the relevance of this function in early concept books,
Nodelman considers this aspect less important.
We believe that early picture books, as we have described them, are
pre-literature.
The relevance of the two conditions (4) and (5) proposed by Apseloff
have already been demonstrated by the detailed description of three early
concept books the variety of and the section on linguistic aspects. Three
remaining criteria will be examined.
In considering Apseloff’s first condition, we believe that a precondi-
tion for joint attention to an early concept book is that the child already
knows what to do with a book. Toddlers that do not know yet what a
book is for, will chew it, or throw it away. They need an adult or older
child to learn the “rules of book behaviour” (Lewis 135). These rules
include sitting still, turning the pages, looking and pointing at the picture.
Children have to learn that a book has a beginning and an end, often
noted by the adult’s interjection “the end” or “the book is finished.” The
child has to learn that every doublespread is important. Skipping pages
means losing information. This gives a sense of linear order. While
looking at an early concept book together, the adult mediator verbally
refers to at least one item on every page. This behavior may be
[131.130.169.5] Project MUSE (2024-04-11 21:18 GMT) Vienna University Library

characterized as an instruction to the child not to miss any of the pages.

This shows children that books should be looked at completely, a
condition for becoming a more competent recipient.
The missing text and seemingly random images have lead to the
assumption that early concept books present something in between,
neither typical representatives of picture books nor part of “literature.”
However, as Kress and van Leeuwen have noted, early concept books are
important for the acquisition of “new literacy” (33). They emphasize that
this book type functions as an introduction to visual literacy and
stimulates children’s imagination, which is Apseloff’s second condition.
Kress and van Leeuwen stress a crucial point that we will explore
systematically by examining four phenomena: (1) denotation of the
depicted object, (2) sequential structure of pictures, (3) preparation for
understanding the concept of story, and (4) principle of representation
(23, 24–25).
Although early concept books generally do not contain a text, some
have single words denoting the represented object and usually printed
beneath it. The words have two functions. They help the child to
distinguish between visual symbols and printed letters, and denote the
 First Pictures, Early Concepts: Early Concept Books 341

relevant concept. Even if young children cannot read, they can grasp the
difference between type and visual representation of an object. As noted
by Apseloff, an early confrontation with printed letters emphasizes skills
of observation that lead to reading (65).
Adults can choose labels for represented objects when showing early
concept books without words. For example, an illustration of a stuffed
bear might be labelled bear, teddy bear, or just teddy, or an image of a
dog could be referred to as dog, doggie, or bow wow. Examining these
books with single words finds that those that function as basic level
categories are preferred, thereby stressing the prototypical properties of
the represented object. In comparison, particular terms such as robin
(instead of bird) or beagle (instead of dog) are not used. However,
Nodelman regards this convention merely as an act of labelling objects
(31), whereas Kress and van Leeuwen claim that the printed words serve
to “bestow similarity and order on the diverse heterogeneous world of
images” (23). Single words do not constitute a narrative, but they can be
regarded as a way of interpreting the illustrations and as a way to
encourage adults to weave their own story.
In contrast to Nodelman’s claim that pictures in early concept books
are not linear, it is striking how the objects unfold on a doublespread and
that they are often thematically connected to each other. This occurs
through similarity, contrast, or relationships.
With similarity, pictures are grouped together from the same concep-
tual class, spoon and mug, spade and bucket, comb and brush, or roll and
banana. Eleven early concept books from our corpus reflect this organi-
zational style throughout. Children are introduced to an understanding of
conceptual classes, preparing for more complex books.
The contrast style of organization has pictures from opposite concep-
tual classes—such as dog and car, ball and shoes, or telephone and teddy
bear. The contrast of conceptual classes constitutes a sort of visual
enigma, stimulating the viewer’s imagination to find out the reason for
the combination, which may be between animate and inanimate or in a
sequence of actions. To go on the playground children have to put on
shoes (ball vs. shoes). This calls into question Apseloff’s second point
that this book type generally does not stimulate the imagination.
This possible form of interaction shows certain similarities of organiz-
ing by relation that is rare in early concept books. Objects are combined
to establish a relation, for example watering can and flower. A more
complex ability is required. Children have to figure out how the objects
belong to each other. How is an apple connected to the apple tree? The
principle of relation is usually realized on the last doublespread of early
342 Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Jörg Meibauer

concept books. This occurs in Hermann Wernhard’s Mein erstes Buch,

My First Book (1988), which is otherwise dominated by similarity. An
exception is Regina Hufen’s Meine bunte Welt. Zu Hause, My Colorful
World. At Home (1999), which is structured around relationships.
These organizing principles will gradually introduce sequential struc-
ture. This is essential for an understanding of literature, as texts are read
in a specific order.
These thematic references encourage viewers to name depicted objects
and make connections between them. The explanations from these
findings surpass the process of naming because a relation between the
depicted objects is established. Children and adult mediators may then
engage in a specific sort of conversation, for example questions and
answers or a narrative. If this is right, Apseloff’s third condition, that
early concept books do not initiate the beginning of a narrative through
verbalization, would be incorrect.
This possibility is supported by three organizing principles, which
confirm a sequential structure of early concept books. Sticking to one
principle in an early concept book evokes a sense of anticipation in the
viewer. By turning the page, a young reader expects to look at a
doublespread that will follow the same principle established at the book’s
beginning. Early concept books change from the principle of similarity to
the principle of relation on the last doublespread; this implies a sort of
climax. This type of early concept book constitutes a preliminary
narrative form. Through oral storytelling, which establishes a connection
between the pictures or hints at the relation between an image and a real
object, young children will be introduced to a form of narrative.
Young children learn that words and pictures represent objects. In
early concept books, young children can see a correspondence between
named objects and picture. They can then produce mental pictures
associated with concepts. If someone uses the word apple in a situation
where neither a real apple nor an image of an apple is seen, children can
“recall” an image of this object in their mind (Goswami 189). The ability
to produce mental pictures and assign them to words and sentences is an
essential step to understanding of literature.
As we have shown by the analysis of the visual, linguistic, and literary
aspects of early concept books, this book type fulfills every condition
mentioned by Apseloff. Even Nodelman’s assumptions should be recon-
sidered. Since early concept books usually are the first books for young
children, introducing them to basic features for a young child’s develop-
ing sense of literature, we will adopt Apseloff’s notion of “pre-literature”
as an adequate classification label of early concept books. If the notion of
 First Pictures, Early Concepts: Early Concept Books 343

“literature” is restricted to works that tell a sort of story through a

sequence of sentences and/or pictures, “pre-literature” describes books
that introduce young children to the book format, challenges verbaliza-
tion, show a variety of illustrations, stresses the joint work of reading
between adult and child, and stimulates imagination. By paying attention
to the sequence of pictures, the rudiments of narrative structure are
already being put into place.
This would indicate that early concept books convey basic skills which
play an important role in the acquisition of literary competence, contrib-
uting to visual literacy and language acquisition, and emergent literacy
(Jones 25–27). Consequently, we propose to systematically correlate a
child’s growing cognitive abilities with further properties of early
concept books as well as related book types for children up to three years
old.8 Since interdisciplinary studies connecting the findings of language
acquisition research, picture theory and children’s literature research are
not only rare, but promising, we have linked these together with hopes of
stimulating further research.

Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer is Privatdozentin at the German De-

partment at the University of Tübingen (Germany). Recent books include
Klassiker der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur (2 vols., 1999) and Kinder-
literatur, Kanonbildung und literarische Wertung (2003).

Jörg Meibauer holds the Chair for German Linguistics at the Johannes
Gutenberg-University in Mainz (Germany). His research interests are in
the grammar-pragmatics-interface, word formation, and language ac-
quisition. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the sixteenth
IRSCL conference in Kristiansand, Norway, in July 2003.

Notes
1
Two editions are recorded. The first one has the subtitle: Es Buech, wo nüd
lad, für die ganz Chline, A Book Which Is Untearable, For The Little Ones
(1910). The second edition in 1923, consists of four, thick, cardboard pages with
some different objects.

2
In the 1991 edition, Edward Steichen’s daughter’s name has changed to
Mary Steichen Calderone. This reissue was published in association with the
Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and included an epilogue by
John Updike.
 344 Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Jörg Meibauer

3
According to the Dutch publishing house Mercis, which has the copyright
for this book, Bruna’s book was never published in the Netherlands. Mercis
claimed that the original colors of Bruna’s illustration were changed by the
German publisher Otto Maier Verlag. Since different color versions of Bruna’s
ball exist, this problem is difficult to resolve.

4
This arrangement also occurs in the Swiss German book. The similarity of
design can be regarded as a convention of older concept books.

5
A possible reason for this is the so-called whole object assumption that
suggests that young children assume words refer to whole objects, not to parts or
properties, as proposed by Ellen Markman in Categorization and Naming in
Children.

6
Concerning the abstract style, Tana Hoban’s famous Shapes and Things
(1970) consists of simple, black-and-white silhouettes, which is a further stage
in early concept books.

7
Goldsmith published a comprehensive research report about this topic; she
referred to psychological research that supports the thesis “that what is often
called ‘visual literacy’ cannot be taken for granted” (111). Maria Nikolajeva
provides a summary of relevant research in children’s literature in the Handbook
and Early Childhood Literacy (235–48).
[131.130.169.5] Project MUSE (2024-04-11 21:18 GMT) Vienna University Library

8
This idea already occurs in Nicholas Tucker’s The Child and the Book,
which shows the author’s interest in the cognitive and intellectual development
of children. A first step toward a classification of book types intended for small
children was undertaken in Kümmerling-Meibauer’s article on preschool books,
which will appear in the forthcoming Oxford Encyclopedia of Children’s
Literature.

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