Suspended Animation ─ Children's Picture Books and the Fairy Tale of Modernity

Through a combination of nostalgia and new printing technologies, picture book publishing in America became a popular enterprise between the wars. Suspended Animation analyzes the phenomenon of American picture books and what their imaginative form and content reveal about the modern nation. With engaging color and black-and-white illustrations from influential texts, Nathalie op de Beeck shows how these word-and picture sequences provide deceptively simple stories within the specific historical and cultural contexts of the period between the 1910's and 1940's. By examining the production of picture books, their modes of storytelling, and their nods to both the avant-garde and mass culture, Suspended Animation traces the development of the American picture book in the history of modernity.

Nathalie op de Beeck is associate professor of English at Pacific Lutheran University. Her scholarly projects include Little Machinery: A Critical Facsimile Edition.