Storytelling with Pictures

There's a lot of focus on the written form of storytelling on Spinning Straw into Gold, but literary tales are a fairly recent addition to the folklore pool.  Oral storytelling is the origin of many beloved fairy tales.  Storytelling in pictures is another traditional medium.  Done well, it can capture the imagination just as effectively as words, as one can see through the life's work of Dutch painter Rien Poortvliet.

I grew up watching David the Gnome, a quietly magical children's cartoon from the days when Nick Jr. (Nickelodeon) was an unlikely treasure trove of foreign culture.  A few years later, a book appeared in our library collection titled The Book of the Sandman.  As a teen, the similarities between these illustrations and what I remembered of David led me to seek out Rien Poortvliet's books on gnomes.

It was everything I remembered of my beloved children's show and more.  I was delighted to learn that the qualities which drew me to the animated series were rooted directly in the books.  Poortvliet approaches his mythical subjects as one writing a field guide, creating a layer of authenticity reminiscent of what one finds researching oral traditions in rural areas of old Europe.  Look at the sketchy quality of his paintings subtitled with inky scribblings:

field notes?

Poortvliet's knowledge of the natural world and talent in reproducing it to paper make the fantastic both mysterious and familiar--mysterious because of the successful representation of the secret silence of nature, and familiar due to its lovingly accurate portrayal.  One would expect to glimpse the following scene on a casual summer stroll in the mountains.

hard at work

His books don't talk down to children, either.  There's reference to history and science, with vocabulary to match.  Poortvliet's determination to immerse the reader in an utterly believable world is one of the unique charms of his storytelling.  Whatever the chthonic creature--be it gnome, troll, or sandman--he takes great pains to record logical explanations for the roles and habits of his subject.

The courtesy he pays his fairy tale folk by taking them seriously, for me, earns him no small amount of respect.