To speak about children's books with images, we have to go back to the 19th Century, when children used to live special circumstances: on the one hand, they had a limited access to leisure, and this was also limited to reading and the toy room.

The options they had related to books were few:

• Reading school magazines, which used to have engravings.
• GO to family libraries, where they could find nearly everything. Aong the books, there were illustrated magazines, which were quite common in that period.
• Buy (with their families) hallelujahs and romaces at fairs and markets, to blind people. They used to show popular xilographies, at acceptable prices, and with a wide variety of possibilities.
• Wait until they had a present: a book specially written for children, as for example PARRAULT's tales, illustrated by G. DORÉ (1862). We cannot forget that, in that period, important editing houses were born, like Larousse (1852) or Flammarion (1878).

In Spain, SATURNINO CALLEJA imitates these editions, creating distinctive covers, and black and white illustrations inside, comging thus to illustrated albumns (but not yet to "illustrated albumns").

HEINRICH HOFFMAN
This German doctor, after looking unsucessfully for an illustrated album for his four-year-old son, drew himself in 1844 a series of stories, which later on became famous; DER STRUWWELPETER. The editor, Löning, published 1500 books, which were sold in only one month, and the book reached 100 editions.

KATE GREENAWAY
The English illustrator drew in 1866 AN APPLE PIE. She adapts a popular rhyme to what happens to the pie, which becomes more and more little, creating, this way, narrative unity to the story. Greenaway is also successful in creating formal unity between text, image, colour and typography, something totally revolutionary for that time.

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION burts out in 1917, and it will bring some cultural needs. Some editors consider that the production of books for kids is something urgent, to reinforce the cultural identity. We can highlight the work of several fo them, like Bulanov, Ermolaieva or Levedev.

Some of the Russian editors, as well as authors, arrived into Paris later, where that pedagogy settled down to create their own products.

PAUL FAUCHER (1898-1967)
This French editor and pedagogue, devoted to reading learning in children, created the series ALBUMS DU PÈRE CASTOR. As he was interested in the way handicapped children used to learn, or also children from marginal places, he realised it was necessary to adapt the books to their multiple necessities. Then, we can find a new concept in the album he creates and edits, because the shapes vary according to the project: image becomes autnomous from the text, thus being an element with a high pedagogical dose, and it changes al the aspects of the book: format, binding, covers, etc. He creates a new type of books, with soft covers, small handy formats, which make the book become a funny toy, desired by the smaller readers.

JEAN DE BRUNHOFF
The French painter creates, in 1931, BABAR, THE LITTLE ELEPHANT. The story appears with the letters he send to his children. With a minimalist trace, and illustrations of a big format, he creates a work of high simplicity ans spontaneity, as well as with a relevant symbolic value. In this book we can see Le Corbussier's theories in the elephant city, or one Montessori class in KING BABAR (1932).

In Spain these works were taken into account, and some editors created collections inspired by them: "La Sirena", by La Galera; "Tren azul", by Edebé; "Los piratas", by SM, and others..

Since the 70s, the social paradigm, and its relation with communication changes radically: mass culture, the acceptance of any type of signs and communication media, the break-up with academic orthodoxy, all these bring about new media, new formats, new ways of telling stories and of communicating to society.

In the literary activity the world of the possible becomes important, and then we find fabulism (Borges, García Márquez, Calvino, ...), and the same happens with the graphic world (Munari, Mariscal, Warhol, ...).

The ILLUSTRATED ALBUM appears as we know it today: a book in which image does not only becomes important, but also acquires a new communicative function.

WHERE MONSTERS LIVE (1963)
The American Maurice Sendack breaks the usual limits in illustrated albums: he overcomes the double page, plays with cinema zooms, and breaks the convention of monsters defeated by humans.

LITTLE BLUE AND LITTLE YELLOW (1962)

American publicist Leo Lioni goes beyond, and tells a story with blue and yellow abstract shapes: they mix up, their families do not recognise their green son as their own. A very transgressive story from a formal point of view, with a deep emocional background.

YELLOW BALLOON (1967)

Italian designer Iela Mari was specialised in the didactic of image with hanidapped children. In this work she presents all kinds of transformations experimented by a round red shape. The fact that the book has no text makes the image tell it all, and demand from the reader an interpretation effort, of a symbolic type.

FLICTS (1968)
Brazilian publicist Ziraldo designs a fascinating work about a colour which does not exist, FLicts. Non of the other colours wants to mix up with it, and it is not accepted by anyone, because of its singular different identity. Typography is essential, too, as it becomes part of the global message of the book. Flict is, finally, the colour of the moon. Neil Amstrong himself, when he stepped on the satellite, said "the moon is flicts".

The four works are considered today as musts in illustrated albums, and in all of them we can find a series of common characteristics:

- They provoke a narrative crossing between text and image (in some occasions the text does not exist)

- They establish a series of narrative sequences conditioned by image, creating this way the idea of cadence.

- A high communicative value: the author experiments with the formal aspect, so as to reach a reader who has to be surprised.

- The illustrated album is the narrative product od a re-invention of knowledge, as something open flexible, adaptative.