Talking about the weak points of Iranian illustration, Mohammed Ali Baniasadi, Iranian nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Awards, 2012, said:" The new generation of the Iranian illustrators is influenced by the west and extra attention is paid to international awards."

IBNA: The 9th session of promoting reading was held on Monday themed on "Good illustrations for children and adolescents and promoting reading".

Noted Iranian illustrator Mohammed Ali Baniasadi and the president of Hans Christian Andersen Award's jury panel, Zohreh Ghaeni attended the session talking about illustration and its role in promoting reading.

Ghaeni talked about the positive role of illustrations in encouraging the children to read books saying that books which hold a good context but fails to have attractive illustrations do not draw children.

She then talked about the aim of illustrations in disclosing the meaning of fictions or non-fiction works and talked about illustration books saying every book which holds 1 or 2 pictures or more is called an illustration book. In these books, the contexts are independent and they aren’t dependent to the illustrations.

She added that figures including Roberto Innocenti, Quentin Blake and ‏Shel Silverstein are among the distinguished illustrators. Arts cannot be restricted to forms accordingly we cannot present the standards of a good illustration but general definitions determine a good picture.

She then talked about Picture books and explained:" In Picture books the context and illustrations present a story or concept together. These kind of books are large and hold less pages and the pictures have the significant role."

For instance some kinds of books are made for babies, in cloth or plastic, which express simple stories. The pictures get more complicated as the age of the reader raises. The stories are usually recounted for the child by a storyteller, parent or teacher.

She then talked about conceptual books saying that the work presents abstracts to children for instance peace and death. Moreover the books can teach the colors as well.

Ghaeni went on to say that in fictional-illustrated books the context and pictures tell the story, for example Maurice Sendak's We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy is a successful work.

In other news, Baniasadi talked about Iranian illustration and said:" It is said that Iranian illustration fails to have motion. The new generation of Iranian illustrators is impressed by the west. They mostly seek awards and accordingly consider single frames and amazing ones. They believe that international awards stabilize their position but they never ever think that bagging awards is just one of the ways."

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