Tana Hoban's "I Read Symbols" and "Shadows and Reflections"

Tana Hoban had already been a professional photographer for three decades before she published her first photographic picture book for young children, "Shapes and Things," in 1970, and she published 50 childrens' books before her death last January. We recently discovered her work through two books on loan now from the library - "I Read Symbols" and "Shadows and Reflections," which have seriously captured Z's interest.


"Shadows and Reflections," published in 1990, represents a culmination of some of Hoban's thinking about engaging children with visual concepts. There is first the basic insight, true to her conscious cultivation of a child's-eye view, that shadows and reflections, while being almost diametrically opposed phenomena (one represents color and surface by reflecting light, and the other represents shape by blocking it), pose wonderfully interlocking puzzles for small children. In the case of interpreting a shadow, the question is, "What does this represent?" while in the case of a reflection, their challenge is "Where does this representation come from?" In both types of photographs Hoban frames her images in ways that emphasize these tantalizing questions for inexperienced eyes.

In doing so, she discovered a "natural" way to create the suggestive reality she had previously designed in picture books in which children were shown only part of an image and implicitly (rarely using words) invited to intuit a larger object or scene, or books (like "Shapes and Things," her first) which were photograms, or black-on-white reversals that were colder and more contemporary versions of what Dr. Seuss would borrow three years later for his classic "The Shape of Me and Other Stuff," easily Geisel's most "conceptual" children's book.

"A neat row of garbage cans sitting in the bright sun inspired me to do the counting book, 'Count and See,'" Hoban wrote in a 1979 essay quoted by her Washington Post obituary. "All but half of a dozen of my books come from such perceptions of daily surroundings, organized so as to give the child a sense of verbal relationships, or concepts."
Speaking as a graphic designer, I find "I Read Symbols" (1983) to be a very satisfying book to read with Z, as she greatly enjoys discussing what the various signs (most of them lacking words) indicate. She has been interested for a while in how stoplights govern our driving habits, what different types of vehicles are for, and anything related to trains, and this book neatly cuts across all of those interests as well as many things she as a two-year-old has not thought about before. (She now knows what the red circle with a hash line through it means ["No!" she will scold] even though she does not yet know what the cigarette inside of it is.)

We are all looking forward to discovering many more of Hoban's books during this magical period in our daughter's life where so many simple things are new and profound, and their conceptual nature makes it very rewarding to see Z make connections that rapidly broaden her understanding. Tana Hoban had a keen understanding of that sensation and of its value, and communicates it fluently in her books.