Picture This by Molly Bang
Published in 1991
Image Credit: Molly Bang on Amazon

In her book Picture This, picture book illustrator Molly Baignng undertakes the task of telling the well-known story Little Red Riding Hood via nothing more than a series of shapes and colors, She begins with a red triangle, and she asks questions about that shape.

“We see shapes in context, and our reactions to them depend in large part to that context….’ Do I feel anything for this shape?’…  Bang, pg. 8

Bang places the red triangle within a larger white frame, and the conversation continues:

“It isn’t huggable, Why not? Because it has points…..” Bang, pg. 8

To better tell the story of Little Red Riding Hood, Bang added another triangle. The larger shape is the mother:

Bang notes that the mother, because of her size, in relation to the smaller shape, has become the star of the page—the mother has stolen Little Red’s thunder. To soften the the mother’s shape and to make it more huggable, she removes its points:

Although the mother is softer, she is still the more prominent shape. Therefore, Bang changed the mother’s color to a much softer color—lavender.

To see Bang’s story unfold, watch the following video: