Tuesday
By: David Wiesner
Introduction
Tuesday is a picture book about frogs who seem to magically be able to fly one morning. The story shows the adventure of the flying frogs and what they do at different times of the night on Tuesday. The book has colorful illustrations and minimal text that goes along with the illustrations. The story is open for different interpretations since it does not have many words, but it is very intriguing.
Literary Elements
The setting of this story is on a Tuesday night. The plot is a progressive plot. The story tells the reader the different times as the night goes on. The readers' see the frogs exploring the town on their lily pads and the different adventures they go through. The ending of this story is an open ending because it is open for the reader's interpretation. Throughout the story frogs are shown flying through town, then on the very last page, pigs are starting to fly. The picture on the left shows the last page of the book. The author says he ends the book this way because,"I hope to entice to take that great leap of faith and believe that frogs, and perhaps pigs, too, could fly- if the conditions were just right."
Physical Features
The setting of the book seems realistic. It is a typical town in the middle of the night. The characters such as the man and the dog in the story look realistic. Even the frogs look realistic. In an article that the author wrote about the story, he says how he looked up real images of frogs and based his drawings off of those. All the characters in the story are three dimensional. Also, each picture has a frame around it and the picture spans across the whole page. When there is text involved, vertical lines are used to separate text and images.
Visual Elements
In this book, blues and greens were mostly used. This is most likely because the book is supposed to take place at night. The green is because of the frogs and it represents nature since they are flying through a town. Also, blue is used a lot because it can be seen as a restful color which relates to the nighttime. This story is told in third person because the reader's are looking on to what is happening on the story, rather than being "in the story."
Artistic Style
This book is surrealistic. It is unrealistic because the frogs are flying through town on their lily pads. Cartoon art is used because the pictures are exaggerated and movement is shown through them as they fly through the town. Even though this book is mostly unrealistic, there are realistic elements. An example is impressionistic art. Natural colors are used for the coloring of the town and the characters involved. In this picture, there is a mix of realistic are and nonrealistic art. The man looks like a typical person, but when you look through the window you see flying frogs which would be cartoon art. The author said he used these elements mostly for humor and for readers' to imagine what it would be like to actually have magical animals that could fly throughout his/her town.
Artistic Media
This book has the use of paint throughout the story. It looks as if the other drew the characters and backgrounds and then painted them in. All the drawings are precise and three dimensional. In the picture on the left, you can see how the frogs and the furniture in the room are three dimensional and realistic looking. The use of the paintings like this show the elements of realism in this story because the town that the frogs fly through look as if it could be a real town.
Elements of Illustration
There are a lot of vertical lines in this book. The vertical lines frame the pictures and separate pictures from each other if there are more than one on a page. This could be used to show stability and a good transition from one image to the next. Also, as you turn each page in this book, you see the next location of the frogs which keeps the book suspenseful.
Interplay of Text & Illustrations
There are not that many words in this book, but when there are they are consistent. Every time there are words they appear on the left side of the book. They are all in black font with a white background and only about a sentence each. These sentences keep the reader informed about what time it is. The time changes throughout the book which relates to the change of location throughout the town that the frogs fly to. In the beginning of the story, it says how it is Tuesday around eight at night. In the picture the frogs seem to appear to become magical around that time. Then at the end of the book, the text says it is around the same time, but the next day. It is consistent with the beginning because then it appears that the pigs also appear to be magical.
Conclusion
Overall, Tuesday is a great children's book. It has many literary elements that lets children be creative. The book has very little text and is easy to interpret because of the easy transitions from one picture to the next. This book has a lot of colorful pictures that are very detailed and can keep the child's focus. It also has many elements of magic such as the frogs and pigs being able to fly. This element can let the the child analyze the pictures and imagine what it would be like if animals really could fly.