Children's books: Same text, different illustrations

I'm honestly not sure what the consensus is here. I know that in general illustrations are not grounds for separation, but in children's books the illustrations are more important relative to the text than in regular books, and I think there's a good case to be made for separating children's books that share the same text but have different illustrations, as may happen for a classic poem or song that's been illustrated many different times. I see that there are numerous editions of The Night Before Christmas; does this constitute enough of a precedent to separate other similar cases?

(If anyone's wondering, what brought this on is a book I just bought for my son, where the review clearly references illustrations very different from those in my copy.)

From an LT perspective, the same text, even in translation, is considered to be the same WORK. Differences of illustration, which I agree are very important, are different EDITIONS. There is some detail level for editions based, in part, on ISBN. However, a real editions layer has been promised for at least a year or two.

There are reasons why I'd have more than 20 versions of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne.

Of course there are collectors who spend all of their energies on a single title. Popular topics include:

* Treasure Island
* Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass (often bound together)
* A Child's Garden of Verses
* Story of Little Black Sambo
* Little Women
* Gulliver's Travels
* Wind in the Willows
* Pilgrim's Progress
* Robinson Crusoe
* Mother Goose
* Anne of Green Gables

In short, any "classic" is likely to have multiple illustrated editions. The Green Tiger Press issued a number of fairy tales by Cooper Edens that contained representative illustrations from many different Victorian and early 20th Century editions of the stories. These included a checklist of the source editions and many have started collecting the different books as a result.

James

#3 by @Collectorator>

A great many of the collections of fairy tales (Andersen or Grimm) have different collections of stories. That would be sufficient motivation to keep them separate if one could tell that they were different.

Similarly, the guidelines for LT combinations do account for abridged and especially children's adaptations that are quite different from the original work.

In the Jules Verne example I am becoming especially aware of different translations, with different qualities, as opposed to just illustrations to gaze upon. However, Frecnch, English, or Danish, the different translations are grouped together as the same work in LT. That's a decision outside my hands so I try not to worry about it and rely on my own tags and title markers to group and separate them.

James

2>

Not, in fact, being the utter moron you take me for, I am aware of basic LT rules. Which is why I was asking about whether there was a different consensus in this particular case.

With classic stories, the lack of en edition layer on LT is really showing.

As was discussed in the combination/separation project thread, with the little golden books, it seems so simple, but then someone mentioned big golden books and how they were different but the same and aaarrgh..

My thoughts:
Childrens books are often abridgements. Abridgements get separated from the original work.
Abridgements are often combined with each other into 1 abridged work.
They can be substantially different, enough to warrant separation.
a 100 line children's story illustrated by A is substantially different to a 200 line children's story illustrated by B.

I'm not of a fixed mind about this, hope it helps you.

If the illustrator is different for a children's book then you have a different secondary author.

I do feel that if the book has fifty percent or more illustrations as opposed to text then there is a substantial difference in the editions and may thus be a different work.

I think that the issue here is mainly with picture books. For instance, I have a beautifully illustrated edition of Jabberwocky. As much as I love the poem, I bought the book for the illustrations, and they are a major distinguishing difference from other editions of Jabberwocky. The book is at least as much about the art as it is about the words.

I am unaware of a consensus. When the illustrator has been listed as the main author and the writer of the text as a secondary author, I've been assuming that that user cares more about the illustrations than the text and wants to only be linked to other people with those particular pictures. When the author of the text is listed first, I've assumed that it is the story that they care about (as it is for me) and that all the same text by the same (primary) authors should be combined.

Personally I want to be linked to people who are interested in the story. I could care less about the pictures.

And if we get out of picture books and start looking at chapter books like the Wizard of Oz, do we really think there is a social difference between the people who have the one with the Denslow illustrations and those with the A.S. Neill illustrations?

I've been thinking about this in terms of whether the illustrator should be listed as primary or secondary author. The rule of thumb I've been using is if the words could be reprinted with different pictures, then the words are primary. If they are interrelated so that the meaning could be lost if separated, as in, say, a graphic novel, writer and illustrator are both main authors. If the pictures (say, a photo essay) could be published with different words, then the artist is the primary. It's not perfect, but it gives me a starting place.

As to the OP's question, I would only separate by illustrator if I were reasonably sure that the illustrations were somehow separate from the words. In the Jabberwocky example, it seems to me that the purpose is to illustrate Jabberwocky. Without the words, the book would not have been created. So it is connected to all other Jabberwocky editions. I am aware that others would disagree.

The point, I think, is not why individuals have a particular edition, but how the edition fits into the greater sense of what is a work.

As had been said, children's books with the same title are often adaptations and can be wildly different. But I have seen a couple of examples of children's book author's words being reused with a different illustrator. I think you're likely to see that in children's books that are being modernized. Not classics, but more like Golden Books. In that case, I'd still combine with the author.

This really isn't a story, and there's no adaptation - the text is identical. (It's a song. Lift Every Voice and Sing, specifically. Which is why the Night Before Christmas was what I used for a comparison - it's a poem, so the text is short and the illustrations are primary.) It's picture books specifically, which I guess I was less clear about in saying "...where the illustrations are more important..." than I thought I was.

I really need to stop expecting people on LT to check profiles if they don't recognize a user and see that someone has been here for 7+ years and is therefore not completely clueless. It just seemed odd to me that this particular use-case, where the illustrations are primary and there are multiple editions with word-for-word identical text and different illustrations but the works are still very different, hadn't been hashed out that I could see

11: I've seen attempts to hash this out before. I've always bailed at the point when people seemed to be stuck repeating positions that amounted to "I want to be connected by text" vs. "I want to be connected by illustrator". That's when I made my own private rule of not combining in books that are listed with the illustrator as primary, because clearly this is very important to some people where it leaves me cold.

If there's some consensus position between "the illustrations don't exist without the text so the work is the text" and "the text is nothing without the illustrations so the illustrations constitute the work," I'm not seeing it.

We could vote:At least that would provide data for the next round.

Just to be sure--"picture books" are always children's books, right?

I think a good argument can be made that for children's books especially, sometimes illustrations play a major role and may justify separation. (FWIW, on occasions when I buy children's books for myself, it is far more often because of the pictures than the text. And some titles, like Carroll's Alice, I collect in multiple editions expressly for the illustrations.)

It's probably something best decided on a case-by-case basis, as it's inevitable that people will disagree on whether the illustrations are "primary" or not in any given example.

My personal view, after some thought, is not to separate on the basis of illustration alone, as the illustrations (however different) are there to enhance the story/song/poem, and not the other way around. If and when an edition layer happens, the books will probably be recombined anyway, and I think most reviewers who bought a particular edition for the illustrations would mention that in their review.

I would say the same for The Night Before Christmas. I'm sure they'll be recombined when we have an edition layer...

If we start making exceptions for the children books, sooner or later someone will want to start separating lavishly illustrated versions of any book... and the whole point of the works will be lost.

It does not matter who illustrated Cinderella - if the story is the same, it is the same book. Yes - this is not true for a collector but until we have an edition layer, I'd rather see the people that have Cinderella connected than to have 100 works based on who happened to do the art... that defeats the whole principle of having different editions in the same work...

Edit: Where "same story" means the same text (with minor changes and translations) - if it is a retelling, it is obviously a different story. I am NOT saying we should bundle all Cinderella tales together. But if they are the same tale, different illustrations - well... they are the same story.

Hm, yeah, but that's one instance of where we hit the slippery slope. There will be many variant text versions of Cinderella, and I feel those should not all be combined just for sharing the basic story line.

15, 16 >

Yes, let's be clear we're speaking about the same text, as such would be the the case with A Visit from St. Nicholas or Jabberwocky, not just the same tale by different tellers.

>16 Nicole_VanK:, 17

I think I said it badly - I meant same text (with small changes and translations), not same story. I'll edit above.

I have a lovely copy of The Night before Christmas. I really like the pictures. But in the end it is still a copy of The Night before Christmas and I bought it for the text.

So, a consensus seems to be forming:
When the text of the book is identical to other books, do not separate.

Hm, yes, though I could see it the other way for things like alphabet books and such. "A is an apple"...

Let me explain by example. In the unlikely event that The Very Hungry Caterpillar would be published with very different illustrations, I'm not sure these should be combined.

@lorax it's hard to not talk about issues one is currently thinking of that are related to the issue at hand, please forgive any conflation with your original issue on my part.

True. I did write it was forming...

Fair enough, it is indeed too early to speak of a real consensus.

21> But even if there are several alphabet books that start A is an Apple, they will usually chose different words for later letters. And only very, very rarely have an author who isn't also the illustrator. The only problem is editions entered only with a title 'A is an Apple' and neither an author (illustrator) or ISBN entered. I personally would never combine such a book with another work.

And I can't imagine that Eric Carle would ever allow his words to be published with someone else's pictures.

I did call it an unlikely event ;-)

Ah well, I'm probably getting too theoretical anyway.

I was going to chime in and say "Picture books with different pictures are different books," but after reading Phaedra's comment #10, I think I'm changing my mind.

Different editions of, say, The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper with different illustrations still tell the same story in the same way -- my local children's librarian even produced two different editions of this book with different illustrations one storytime, and let the kids look at the pictures in one while she read the other! Those two editions can be combined.

Books whose illustrations are integral to the story, more similar to comic books than to text-only books, should perhaps be separated. The (equally unlikely) example I thought of was One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss... "This one is quiet as a mouse. We like to have him in the house," where the only referent for "this one" is the picture. The pictures and the text inform each other. So, where the pictures are integral to the story and not just "illustrating" it, different pictures means different work.

Just playing devil's advocate, but based on comments above, could I not make a case for combining Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet with Shakespeare's play, since it's the same "text", but just "illustrated" differently?

Perhaps a more apt example to explore the limits of this question (and leaving aside the question of printed music vs. sound recordings, which I'm inclined to separate), should, say, the piano recordings or Pictures at an Exhibition be combined with orchestral recordings of the same piece (assuming that's all that's on the recording)? Same notes more or less, just differently illustrated?

Maybe those examples are irrelevant because something about the nature of movies/scores/recordings not containing text to read (which lorax's case does)?

(My apologies for possibly annoying those who'd like to banish movie/scores/recordings from LT!)

>30 omargosh:

Books and films are different media - one is words only, the other one is visual+ words.
Audio books are books because it is the text there... and no fancy landscapes :).

And if we start saying that illustrations are enough to separate books, any fine edition will end up on its own. It's really down to how much the illustration change the story.

Comics (where pictures are part of the stories) cannot be combined with the same text with different illustrator (that's way the numerous graphic adaptations of classics are not combined, even when they are the same words (as some of the Shakespeare ones) as there is a second layer of "text" there. )

It's a thin line but then I am on the side of "works are there to connect people" and for me the text is always the important one... so pictures take second place.

I am comforted by the resounding consensus of "I don't know". I think the comparisons of picture books - where the full page is a picture with maybe a dozen words - to books with an illustration every few pages is a total red herring, but I also think it's totally unclear what should be done in the latter case. (Which is why I asked.) I think I'll probably just leave things as I find them, either combined or separated, for now.

30: Personally I'd be happy if we combined video versions of plays with plays and sound recordings with scores (as well as adaptations with the original ur-work), but that's because my conception of work differs from Tim's.

The good thing about Tim's conception is that it has a concrete basis for discussion of differences: the social connections that are fostered and hampered by various proposals. So I'm content to not muck with things that have clear social meaning to people on this site, such as the difference between owning books and owning videos.

ETA: Even if I do review plays based on performances I've seen and not actually sitting down and reading them.

>30 omargosh:, 31, 33 Just playing devil's advocate, but based on comments above, could I not make a case for combining Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet with Shakespeare's play, since it's the same "text", but just "illustrated" differently?

Just to give the devil -- er, @omargosh -- his due for advocacy here, the choice of Branagh's film of Hamlet as an example wasn't idle: That film was, as far as I know, the only Hamlet adaptation to use the complete, uncut text of the play as its script. It may, in fact, be the only film version of any literary work in which the script is demonstrably not an adaptation or abridgment of the source text, but identical to it.

( /film geek moment)

34: There are also a lot of video presentations of plays that are very true to the original (at least as true as a live performance version is going to be), so even though I didn't know that about Branagh's Hamlet, I thought omargosh's point was very well taken.

Yeah, well taken. But for me the fact that they're in an entirely different medium is also a good reason to consider not combining.

This is getting rather far afield from the original question, but one could argue that for plays a performance is the "original" and the script the "adaptation". Not that it has anything to do with whether they should be combined (I'm on the side of "no"), but ABVR's use of "adaptation" in this context struck me as odd - I don't usually think of a performance as being an 'adaptation' unless significant changes have been made.

36, 37: This is far afield and I'm only pursuing it because it's interesting. If there are still issues to pursue about the children's book thing, we should go back to that. (Though I think we can safely say for now that we don't have a good idea of what to do. Hopefully the edition layer will help.)

Back to omargosh's digression:

I definitely do not think these things should be combined on LT.

However, in the broader sense of what the FRBR people intended by the term "work," these are very interesting questions. The idea of work was supposed to alleviate the following problem: a person in a library would look up Tom Paine's Common Sense, find an entry, go to the shelf, find it gone and leave, when there were 100s of other editions in the library that are on different cards (because they are different edition, different printings, different formats, etc. and current library cataloging is at that level). The idea of work was supposed to solve that. If you just wanted to read Common Sense, you would find one entry with all the versions, so you'd know there were many possibilities for finding it if the first try failed.

If you needed a particular edition, you would then be able to "drill down" to the edition level. Ditto a particular printing, format, etc. So ultimately if you needed to know if there was a digital copy of the second Boston printing with Samuel Adam's notes available, you'd be able to find that out, but the person who just wanted to read a copy would also have easy access.

So the average library patron who wants to "read" Hamlet might be perfectly happy to see the Lawrence Olivier movie version, even with its cuts -- in fact might be much happier than trying to read through the play. Someone who has to read it for school however, might do better with an unabridged version. But are they philosophically the same work -- I'd say yes.

One of the English professors at my university, used to hand out a list of the chapters in Moby Dick that you really needed to read to understand the novel, and I have friends who have only read those chapters. Did they read the "work" Moby Dick? Maybe. I've only read the classic comic and skimmed a couple of chapters of the original. Did I read the work? Probably not.

So it all turns out to be much trickier than the FRBR people were thinking when they started.

> 37 I don't usually think of a performance as being an 'adaptation' unless significant changes have been made.

Fair point . . .

When I think/write seriously about adaptation (not often), I'm nearly always doing it in a book-to-film context, where significant changes and abridgments are all but inevitable. Transferring a play script to the stage (or even to the screen) is a different process, and significant changes wind up being artistic choices (witness the 19C "happy ending" version of King Lear) rather than practical necessities.

In retrospect, I wouldn't apply "adaptation," as a blanket term, to the staging/filming of scripts.

20> So, a consensus seems to be forming:
When the text of the book is identical to other books, do not separate.

But the text for translations doesn't need to be identical to be combined, and Cinderella is an translation from a French original. The point being, it's not the text that needs to be identical, but the story.

32> I am comforted by the resounding consensus of "I don't know". I think the comparisons of picture books - where the full page is a picture with maybe a dozen words - to books with an illustration every few pages is a total red herring, but I also think it's totally unclear what should be done in the latter case.

I think the uncertainty is on the picture book side of things. I think there is a consensus for "books with an illustration every few pages" and that's to combine them. For chapter books with illustrations, the text is always primary and they should not be separated.

40 > But the text for translations doesn't need to be identical to be combined, and Cinderella is an translation from a French original

I think it's important to distinguish here between a translation and a retelling. If a Cinderella text is clearly a direct translation of a particular French text, then those two Cinderellas should be combined. But a story that probably exists in many French versions that is retold in another language, that's a whole 'nother issue.

lorax 32> Yeah, I think "I don't know" wins the vote here! :-) The argument seems to be revolving around where to draw the line. To me, your example of a children's book with occasional pictures seems to be fall clearly on the "same work" side of the line (unless the pictures are somehow integral to the storytelling). That's why I drifted toward picture books in my argument -- I see them as being closer to the line.

omargosh 31> Oooh, music-as-text examples! I'd say the piano version should be separate from the orchestration, because one is an "expansion" of the other (new content was added, but in the instrumentation dimension, not in the time dimension). It's kind of the opposite of an abridgement. But recordings of "Pictures at an Exhibition" by the London Symphony and by the Chicago Symphony would be combined under the current system, because they are different "editions" of the same "work".

> 40: it's not the text that needs to be identical, but the story.

All biographies of, say, George Washington tell the same story just with different texts. ;-)

Yeah, a children's book with occasional pictures is an obviously-combine case, which is why I was a bit bewildered that everyone was bringing it up; what I was wondering about was a picture book, and it seems like everyone feels they're close to the line.

45: I personally don't feel they're close to the line, even in an LT context. I want to be connected to people who have the text. I don't care about the pictures. If for some crazy reason, Mrs. Dr. Seuss decides that someone else should illustrated The Cat in the Hat, I want all the editions of the text Cat in the Hat together.

Clearly the majority feels differently. If someone can come up with a test that does not require the combiner to be able to look at both texts before deciding whether to combine or not, I'm listening. (And, as stated above, I will continue not to combine children's books listed with the illustrator first.)

46>

I want to be connected to people who have the text. I don't care about the pictures.

I suspect that in the very specific case of picture books, which is what we're talking about here, you may be in the minority. And the cases of this sort of thing that I've actually seen are not "An existing picture book is re-issued with new illustrations by a different illustrator" but "multiple illustrators produce their own illustrations for the same pre-existing text that was not originally accompanied by any illustrations."

>13 LolaWalser: I would not agree that all "picture books" are children's books . . .

I have several illustrated poetry collections that would fall under this same general discussion. Though some of them are officially called "artist's books" or "book art" . . . which leads to a whole additional discussion . . .

I would take the "undecided" consensus (i.e., lack of consensus) as a message to over-zealous combiners to be more cautious in their need to impose consistency . . .

P.S. >21 Nicole_VanK: Totally agree about "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" :)

Well... It's in fact also those "zealous" combiners who are responding / voting here. But yes, I agree, for pictorial works there is certainly room for doubt whether or not they should be combined. Is The book of Job illustrated by William Blake just another copy of the Book of Job? I'm honestly not sure. And I'm glad that - beyond Blake - this book is rarely published separately.

48> I think that, in at least the picture books that I'm thinking about, there is a lot less text and more pictures than an illustrated poetry collection.

Yeah, but it gets tricky with artist books. I have a few = artist gets inspired by "whatever". In most cases selection of texts will not confirm to anything else - so no immediate worries. But suppose they do? It's a bit theoretical - in the sense I haven't personally run into this problem myself just yet. But it could happen.

There is the question of how often this problem occurs

When this question has come up in the context of graphic novels (like here, http://www.librarything.com/topic/154445) usually the consensus has been that the art is central to a graphic novel therefore different art means different work. I don't see why children's picture books should be any different.

Art books are different from regular books though - the art is leading there and if someone bought this version, it is because of the art...

When you say art book I think of something with full page pictures of paintings. I think graphic novels fall into a different category that is closer to children's picture books.

53: So do we start separating all the Hans Christian Andersen stories by illustrator? This isn't a nice discreet "black-and-white" issue like the Elfquest one. In some cases we're talking about dozens of different editions of the same story with the same name by the same author.

And once we do that, all the people who collect different illustrated editions of classic adult novels are going to want to know why, if we do it for children's books, we don't do it for adult books.

54, 55 >

There's art books and there's art books.

One case is a series of photographic reproduction of an artist's work. The same art or collection of art could be published with different essays and be cataloged as different works.

An "art book" would be a book created by an artist as a work of art from start to finish.

56> I'm talking about Dr. Seuss, not Hans Christian Anderson. In the latter the illustrations are much more secondary.

57> I agree that if the art and words were created in tandem then that makes it a unique work and if the same words were used later with different art then it should not be combined with the former. Apply that to Hans Christian Anderson and the words were created before any art was ever attached to it, but with Dr. Seuss the words and art were created as a unit.

58: Okay, but if I understand lorax correctly, she is not.

I think there are very few cases like the Dr. Seuss one. I was picking an extreme to demonstrate that my position for the text is extreme.

Again, if someone wants to propose a strategy that will cover the Dr. Seuss books but not the Hans Christian Andersen's, I'm listening.

60> I thought I was. Combine Hans, but not the Dr. (in the unlikely case that anyone ever would produce a new work with the same words but different art).

In Lorax' case of The Night Before Xmas my rule would combine them all.

Having read through the discussion, I'm more inclined to think that you are onto something, Lorax. The books you mentioned weren't originally produced in tandem with their own illustrations, and they are short poems/songs which wouldn't be published as a text-only work unless as part of a collection (they are too short). In that respect they are similar to "A is for Apple" style books, and the point of buying the book is as much, if not more, for the illustrations as the text.

We're trying to make rules about what we feel is a work. This is hard.

I like the idea that can be summarized as:

If the text and the illustrations were originally produced together, subsequent versions with different illustrations constitute a new work.

Can you think of examples that would fall under this category but would feel like they should be combined anyway?

Oh yes, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for instance. Lewis Carroll commissioned the original Tenniel illustrations himself, and was very picky in the process. But by now there are many versions with other illustrations and I don't think they constitute enough of a difference to separate them.

In my view it's really also about how important the illustrations are to the work. (I admit it gets tricky).

Most of the Victorian novels are also published with illustrations initially, specially created for them and at the time of the writing in a lot of cases... Or the novels that are published with the art of the author and then is published with a different set of illustrations...

But do you really feel they would be different works?

No. But they were words and illustrations created at the same time... which is what the rule above would have called a separate work.

61: I thought I was. Combine Hans, but not the Dr. (in the unlikely case that anyone ever would produce a new work with the same words but different art).

This requires the combiner to know whether the original had illustrations and, if it did, whether the illustrations were integral to the text or not. It'll work for some very popular text, but gets muddy quickly.

62-67 generally: The Night Before Christmas was originally published in periodical for children with woodblock illustrations by John(?) Nash a famous NY newspaper illustrator. I have a reproduction of the original poem as a separate item.

Virtually all of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales are available as separate readables/downloadables/printables on the internet (some with illustrations, some without). Publishing is changing. Nothing is now "too short" to be "published" by itself anymore.

Rule in 63: I would have no idea if the original Danish tales by Andersen were illustrated or not and, since I can't read Danish very well, it would be difficult to find out.

Edited to fix typo

Ok. Just trying to drill down to a (set of) rules with few exceptions.

I do wonder if there are many recent examples. There will always be scores of retellings and abridgements and adaptations of classic tales. All retellings of an Andersen story don't get combined. All adaptations get separated. Only abridgements get combined with eachother, right?

Heh, every time there is this discussion, I get confused again.. :-/

No worries: we are having these discussions because it is hard to come up with rules that would work.

ETA By the way: personally I would try not to combine different abridgments / adaptations.

69, 70 >

I, too, would lean towards not combining abridgements or adaptations by different authors, as their interpretations can be substantially different. Same plot, different script is one way to think of it.

As far as the "originally published together" rule of thumb suggested in #63, I have recently encountered a couple of children's books, essentially picture books with a lot of pictures and a little text, in editions where the author is the same but the illustrator is different. It looked to me as if it were an attempt to modernize the illustrations. So, though it could be considered a picture book, I combined, as the author was the same and the text was the same even if the pictures were different. Now I wish I would have made a note of them so I could cite the examples, but alas...

69: I suspect there are not many recent examples. When the text is still under copyright, the publisher would (usually, depending on the contract) have to pay the author again plus a new illustrator to put out the same text with different illustrations. So, I think the works we're considering right now generally fall into two cases:

1. The story is in the public domain so the publisher is only paying the illustrator

2. The publisher owns the text (I suspect some of the A is for Apple books fall here) and pays an in-house illustrator to update the illustrations so, for instance, the telephones don't have dials and the people aren't wearing 1950s clothing.

It's the second case that I think will get really murky with jjwilson61's proposal. Are the original illustrations really integrated with the text in such a way that it is a work, rather than the text being a work. Well, if it was your absolute favorite ABC book from your childhood and you buy a new copy for your grandchild and find all the illustrations are "updated" you probably think the new illustrations make it a different (less desirable) work. But how is the average combiner to know one way or the other?

>the illustrations are "updated" you probably think the new illustrations make it a different (less desirable) work.

This is not a reason to call it a different work under LT though. A fine edition of a novel with specially commissioned illustrations and printing and what's not is the same as the 7.99 paperback or the 1960 paperback that is falling apart. Even if the owner of the first believes that his book is more desirable.

72 > When the text is still under copyright, the publisher would (usually, depending on the contract) have to pay the author again...

Copyright doesn't have anything to do with it, it's entirely about how the rights were assigned to the publisher by the author. Since very few authors have the clout to get a contract written in their favor, the publisher has a lot of leeway when it comes to a new edition with new illustrations. All they have to pay the author is subsequent royalties. Unless, of course, it was work-for-hire, in which case all bets are off.

What we need to do is come up with an objective criteria of when two editions belong to the same work or not that is based on facts about the editions. People's personal feelings about a particular work shouldn't enter into it since this is in the common area of LT, not in people's catalogs.

73-75:

Okay, let me try again:

Books written and illustrated by the same person and still under copyright (to the original author) are not likely to be a problem.

So, we're dealing with:

1. Works where the original text is out-of-copyright and any publisher who wants can add new illustrations (the original case that lorax brought up)

2. Works where a single publisher has the rights to publish the text with whatever illustrations they choose and they choose to put out more than one edition with different illustrations. (examples seen by PhaedraB)

Hopefully that clarifies actual cases and gets us away from my silly Dr. Seuss example.

I keep hearing arguments for both cases that run like this:

"The text is the same. They should be combined."

"The text is not as important as the experience of the text and illustrations together. They should not be combined."

Is there are more nuanced position I'm missing?

Practically, the questions of "People have entered these only under the names of the illustrators." and "Most of the entries are only a title without any indication of which versions they might be." are going to be very important, too.

>77 MarthaJeanne:

Except when they are under the illustrator because Amazon sent them there...

I'm still of the opinion that not combining different illustrated editions listed with the illustrator as the primary author is prudent and gives the "illustrations are primary" people an opt-out (assuming we can't find a compromise and the "text is primary" people continue to combine), albeit a klunky one.

I'm thinking of a rule of thumb like when the illustrations take up more than two-thirds of each page that the illustrations should be as important as text for combining. Of course it may be difficult for combiners to determine that in many cases.

79> The problem there is that one person can decide to make the illustrator primary so it isn't any different that one person can decide to combine them. In either case a single person is making a unilateral decision about whether the books should be combined or not. In either case, we still need a rule or at least guideline about when the illustrator should be primary or when the books should be combined.

81: Oh, I meant on their own book. Separate out the illustrators as authors from the main work and let them be their own work.

Agreed that changing the work author isn't helpful.

80 > Unless you've got the book in front of you, "difficult to determine" is a gross understatement. I'd go for nigh impossible.

And in the case of children's readers, if they update Dick and Jane with contemporary clothes, is that really a separate work? Even if there are only a few words per page? You'd have to come up with some argument beyond collectibility to convince me of that.

78, 81 >

I've been doing a lot of work on multiple authors, and I question how often people really "choose" to catalog with the illustrator as primary.

As AnnieMod remarked, many times they are cataloged with illustrator primary because that's the record was imported from Amazon.

I've been cleaning up author entries such as, "Jane illustrated by Joe Doe Smith" (or, "Smith, illustrated by Joe Doe Jane" or "Doe, Jane Smith Joe" etc.) by changing and adding authors on the works. I verify the names with WorldCat whenever possible (although sometimes those records are confusing, too) and then check that edition on Amazon. If Amazon is the source of the goofy data (very, very often), I send Amazon a suggested correction, which are almost always accepted. (If there was a badge for Amazon corrections, I think I'd be up to platinum.) Then I try to make the work reflect the authors as generally entered on WorldCat (trying to remember that those records are not infallible, since ultimately it's human beings cataloging those books, too.)

Once the author hash is removed, I see if the book can be combined. I regularly find the same book cataloged sometimes under the author and sometimes under the illustrator and sometimes under both with no particular rhyme or reason discernible. So, I check all the editions on Amazon. Sure enough, Amazon lists versions of the same picture books some with just the author, some with just the illustrator, some with the author first and the illustrator second, some with the illustrator first and the author second and some with no author or illustrator at all. I send the WorldCat link to Amazon with any suggested corrections. And on LT, I combine.

In the course of this whole tedious process, I have discovered a few instances where a picture book has been reissued with new illustrations. I'm not talking about illustrating a poem or some other classic short text, as has been given as examples. More like a reader or other simple children's book. Not often, but I've found them. In those cases, I have combined those with the other editions, using the author as primary.

Yes, I have too much time on my hands, but that is a separate issue ;-)

The point (I guess I have a point) is that a huge number of users appear to just take the data as it is imported, without giving a hoot about the primacy of illustrator or text author.

We who follow these threads care passionately about this stuff. But plenty, plenty, plenty of other people are just listing their kids' books. Saying that "they put the illustrator first so that must be the most meaningful to them" without considering that they may have never edited the entry they received from Amazon or another source is to my thinking reading way too much into the record (no pun intended).

If my wife is anything to go by, all she cares about is the correct title first, then perhaps the author or illustrator. But only with famous ones she knows herself.

83> I'll give you Dick and Jane.

I haven't read all the posts here but want to add that I recently came to the problem of illustrators winning awards for their work on a classic text. The Kurt Maschler Award was won in 1988 by Anthony Browne and again by Helen Oxenbury in 1999 for their illustrated editions of The adventures of Alice in Wonderland. As the Awards CK only allows one entry per award I had to include both wins on the single entry.

Also the children's picturebook edition of The Whale Rider, artwork by Bruce Potter has won a couple of awards. I'm fairly sure that the text has been adapted for this edition. (Reed, 2005: 186948584X Puffin: 9780143503279)

84: But I suspect that people who don't care also don't care if their works are combined with other works. So even if it's a minority of people who actually put the illustrator first for a reason, I'm suggesting we honor that, as it really doesn't hurt the people who did it because it was the easiest.

88> So you're suggesting that some books that really belong to the same edition (in the real sense, not the LT sense) should be combined with different LT works? That is two identical books and one would be combined with the main work because the cataloger puts the author in the Author field and the other would be in a different work because the cataloger puts the illustrator in the author field.

I don't see anything wrong with it, but it feels like that violates some primal LibraryThing principle.

88 > I'm sorry, but even though you have presented your argument clearly, since the "illustrator is most important" catalogers seem to be so far in the minority in these cases, I have to go with lumping rather than splitting. For those who find it that important, they still can set up their catalog as they wish.

89: That was what I was proposing. I saw it as a stop-gap measure until the edition level resolves some of these problems (and creates new ones)

I was just trying to be kind to the people who want separate records. I personally think they're the same work and should be combined.

90: Well, if you're looking for something to do, you can clean up the mess in Hans Christian Andersen, because I left all the editions with illustrators as main authors un-combined.

91 > I think my attention span is too short at the moment to take on a page that large :-)

Some works consist of words and pictures they are conceived as such. and are incomplete if they do not contain both. Obvious examples are.

Guillaume Apollinaire's Le bestiaire ou le cortège d’Orphée

William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience or more recently

Maus by Art Spiegelman

One does not simply catalogue the Book of Kells with the four gospels. any more than you would catalogue Shakespeare's collected plays with his collected works. One of tthem is missing a major integral part.

Children's picture books are often in this category, they were conceived as a whole. and changing the artwork is would be equivalent to changing the selection of stories in an anthology.

where the wild things are is as much a Livre d’artiste as anything Mattisse ilustrated

In most chapter books though the drawing are not integral but mere illustration. deciding which is which comes down I think to listening. If there is disagreement we will hear about it.

It may be that an old book with new illustrations is aspiring to be treated as a new work. If it succeeds we shall know because someone will complain.

93: I don't believe I've ever seen a version of Songs of Innocence and Experience with all the illustrations.

In my experience on LT people always complain when things aren't exactly the way they expect them to be.

General: My internet service is currently spotty, so I'm going to drop out of this conversation. Carry on.

>94 Collectorator:: Collectorator, I like what you've done there! Makes perfect sense to me, and I'd be more than happy to use this system.

95> wouldn't a facsimile be glorious?