Look at the endpapers!

Look at the endpapers!

I attended a conference in Northern Portugal last week, in a lovely city called Braga, and I heard some excellent presentations.  A Spanish English teacher, researching peritext in picturebooks for her PhD,  gave a wonderfully visual talk on endpapers.  It spurred me to write this  message. "Look at the endpapers!"

I have already posted here on the importance of using the peritextual features of picturebooks, endpapers are part of picturebook peritext. I'm going to take a closer look at the different endpapers we might find in some of the more widely used picturebooks in ELT.

There are endpapers which are left blank, in white or cream.  Sometimes endpapers echo a colour which 'belongs' to the book, if you look at Winnie the witch, by Valerie Thomas and Korky Paul, the endpapers are appropriately black! 

There are endpapers which hint at aspects of the story.  The end papers from The very hungry caterpillar by Eric Carle are at the top of this message.  Did you recognise them? Ripped paper, full of holes.  I wonder if it was the caterpillar? 

Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? by Bill Martin Jr  & Eric Carle has strips of coloured tissue paper in the sequence of the animals as they appear in the story.    Can you see Carle's signature? 

The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffler, celebrated its 10th anniversary in 1999. The endpapers show us a quiet green wood, waiting for something to happen!  My anniversary edition has two sets of endpapers,  at least the paperback version does.  The second set has the sketches for early versions of the characters by Axel Scheffler,  lovely!

Room on the Broom by the same authors, has endpapers showing us the four items belonging to the witch which appear in the beginning of the story and are lost / broken.   They're also in sequential order, with a dark storm brewing sky in the back ground.

Is it because? By Tony Ross is a part of a set of materials from the  British Council Learn English website.  The endpapers are covered in question marks!  

All these examples show us endpapers which are the same at the back and the front. But there are end papers which are different.  We’re going on a bear hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury has two different endpaper sets.  The front ones show us an empty sea shore, possibly early morning, before we set off for our bear hunt.  (The walk doesn't take us along the beach so they are odd, though beautiful illustrations to appear here.)  The back endpapers show us a dark sky at the same beach, with the bear walking away from us.  Dejected and unwanted, poor bear.

Down by the cool of the pool by Tony Mitton and Guy Parker also has  two different endpaper sets.  The front depict a cool bluey pink watery scene, the pool.  Possibly reflecting the pink sky as the sun rises in the morning. The back ones are a delicious orangey yellow, the sun is shining right into the pool.

Handa’s surprise by Aileen Browne has a wavey line of delicately drawn fruit from the story on the front endpapers, and the back ones show us the animals who appeared in the story. There's a sequential order to both sets.

Suddenly! by Colin McNaughton has front endpapers which confirm, 'where there's a pig, there's a wolf!'  For this is what our story is about, a  wolf  following an unsuspecting pig.  But as in all "Tom and Jerry" like comedy, the poor wolf never manages, and the back endpapers are a second ending, with the wolf being taken to hospital!

Sometimes endpapers surprise us by extending the story and giving us more.  One of my favourite picture books, is Say Hello! by Jack and Michael Foreman.  The blurb on the back of the books says: "When someone's looking lonely and in need of a friend, there's one little word that can help…"  The front endpapers are a cool blue, and blue line is used throughout the book, defining places and backgrounds. A little boy watches a group of other childen playing and it is a friendly dog who makes the first move to invite him to play.   A double spread of children watching as the dog jumps up and licks the boy is accompanied by "No need to be the lonely one.  When someone's feeling left out, low, it doesn't take much to say …"   Turn the page and the book ends with the children calling out a huge group "Hello!"

The back endpapers show us how we can say hello in lots of languages, black pencil line font, on the same cool blue background.  Truly spectacular.

Endpapers are amazing things, don't ever forget to pay them the attention they deserve. Go back to them after you've read the picture book and talk about them with the children. If they are there, they're definitely worth looking at. 


All the titles in this blog can be purchased at The book depository, which provides free delivery world wide.