Gravett, Emily. Again! Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2011.

Deliberate composition and typography choices in Emily Gravett's Again! tell the metafictive story within a story, within a story. This double-page spread depicts the agitated baby dragon clutching his bedtime storybook in the foreground, while the background image reveals the last page the mama dragon read from the storybook before falling asleep. All the while, the reader holds on to the physical picturebook whose red and black cover is an exact replica of the storybook in baby dragon's claws.

In this book, the baby dragon lives by routine: play all day, eat a snack, brush his teeth, take a bath, read a bedtime story, read a bedtime story, and read a bedtime story. Instead of creating order for his mama, the routine creates a mess that begins to unfold in this spread. Leonard Marcus, quoting Martha Rago, executive book designer at HarperCollins, notes, "[a] successful book design 'brings order and cohesion to the whole work' while also 'matching the book's emotional content'" (41). Rather than demonstrate order on the page, the design enhances the book's chaos. Centered in the foreground, fully-grown mama weighs heavily, lying on her back on the bottom of the spread. Partially hidden behind her, baby is located off-center and has quite literally lost control of the narrative. In the background, on the verso, mama has changed the words of the story from what is written to what she wants to tell, indicated by a switch in font style to italics. Mama's words begin to fall off the page and turn into her snores as she nods off to sleep. Finally, as the letters drop further and their font size increases, mama falls into a deeper sleep. On the recto, the visual narrative has changed to mimic mama's words. The storybook dragon, Cedric, is not supposed to make friends with the princess, and is certainly not supposed to fall asleep, but in this image, he does. The baby's face reddens from the tip of his nose to the top of his ears. The reader feels the heat and thinks, mama had better not fall asleep again!

Works Cited

Gravett, Emily. Again! Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2011.

Marcus, Leonard S. "Give 'em Helvetica: Picture Book Type." The Horn Book Magazine, vol. 88, issue 5, September/October 2012, pp. 40-46.