Before You Came

Before You Came was illustrated by David Diaz. The colors used in this children's book are magenta, violet, orange, yellow, blue and gree. The illustrations show movement through elements that guide the eye across the pages from left to right such as birds flying, characters facing right. The illustrations are organic with lots of curves and circles and leaf patterns. Nature and movement play a large part in these images. Most of the illustrations span two pages and seem to continue off of the page. Artistic elements are used to draw attention. For example, in the illustration of the red canoe, the canoe is large, covering two pages, and bright red in color. In the illustration of the cat, she is as large as two full pages, her eye is placed on the right page and draws our eye to hers, the line of her body moves from her curled tail on the left, across her body and down to the right, creating movement across the pages. Depth is created with subtle background imagery in organic and round geometric patterns. In the illustration featuring the dog, a red cardinal anchors the eye on the left and a line of pink flowers guides our eye to move gently from left to right across the pages. Blue birrds flying across the gutter enhance the feeling of movement. There are about two to four lines of text per page which tells me that this story was written with a target audience of preschool children in mind. The story is told in the voice of a mother speaking to her child about the world she has created for him.