Module 3: Black and White by David Macaulay

Book Summary:  Four stories are told simultaneously in Black and White. One is of a young boy on a stalled train, one is of a girl and her brother and their parents, one is of people waiting at a train stop for a delayed train, and the last is of cows. Somehow, they all come together to make a unique story.

APA Citation: Macaulay, D. (1990). Black and white. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Impressions: I loved Black and White. I loved how the stories are broken down into four concurrent, different panels and how each of them told a different story with different types of artwork and lettering. I loved how different, postmodern, and charming of a story it was. And I especially loved that I haven't read many stories like it before.

At first, the book is a little confusing. The reader has to decide how they want to read it (all panels at the same time or one panel throughout the story and then flipping back to the beginning to get to read on to the next panel). It is easy to pick up on the different paneled stories quickly, though, and I would love to read it with a child to see how they find the multiple stories taking place simultaneously.

As I haven't had a chance, yet, to read it to or with an early reader I'm not sure how the book would do as a story time read. As an adult reader, though, I found it different and enjoyable. The artwork was beautiful, detailed, modern, and funny: all descriptions of the stories. I'll definitely be picking up Macaulay's other books.

Professional Review: 

At first glance, this is a collection of four unrelated stories, each occupying a quarter of every two-page spread, and each a slight enough tale to seem barely worth a book--a boy on a train, parents in a funny mood, a convict's escape and a late commuter train. The magic of Black and White comes not from each story, however, but from the mysterious interactions between them that creates a fifth story. Several motifs linking the tales are immediately apparent, such as trains--real and toy--and newspapers. A second or third reading reveals suggestions of the title theme: Holstein cows, prison uniform stripes. Eventually, the stories begin to merge into a surrealistic tale spanning several levels of reality, e.g.: Are characters in one story traveling on the toy train in another? Answers are never provided--this is not a mystery or puzzle book. Instead, Black and White challenges the reader to use text and pictures in unexpected ways. Although the novelty will wear off quickly for adults, no other writer for adults or children explores this unusual territory the way Macaulay does. All ages. (Apr.)

Publisher's Weekly. (2005). [Review of the book Black and white by D. Macaulay]. Publisher's weekly. Retrieved February 6, 2015 from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/black-and-white-david-macaulay/1000310904?ean=9780618636877


Library Uses: Black and White could be used in a creative art lesson with children. The beginning of the lesson would be a read-through of the book followed by giving the kids a prompt of different, simultaneous stories and seeing how they create their own paneled, comic book style art.