Picture This: How Pictures Work

Bang discusses the illustrations in her children’s book When Sophie Gets Angry—Very, Very Angry…, which follows the emotional journey of a young girl named Sophie as she navigates overwhelming feelings of anger. Through her illustrations, Bang conveys the various stages of Sophie’s emotional arc, from her initial outburst of fury to the eventual comfort and security she finds in nature and within herself.

Bang emphasizes the importance of deciding on the emotion in every picture before beginning the illustration process. Using four two-page spreads from When Sophie Gets Angry, she explains how she used various visual principles to convey specific emotions in each illustration.

The first spread depicts fury. Bang explains that when children experience a strong emotion, they often feel like it is an external force too big to contain. To convey this idea, Bang depicts Sophie’s fury as a large, red, angry silhouette behind her. The floor is angled to enhance the sense of movement, while a cat in the lower right corner of the two-page spread redirects the viewer’s attention back to Sophie. Bang also points out the significance of the book’s gutter, the split in the middle of the book where the pages join, which makes every page in a picture book a

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