1. Caldecott Illustration Analysis
Rachael Williams

2. A Ball For Daisy By Chris Raschka
Published by Schwartz and Wade Books an
imprint of Random House Children’s Books
2012 Caldecott Medal Winner

3. Style
•
Chris Roschka’s style is
impressionism. In chapter 4 of the
Children’s Literature, Briefly they
define impressionism as a style that
emphasizes light, movement and
color over detail (pg 33). This is one
of his many pictures with movement.
Roschka is portraying Daisy playing
with her ball in this picture. It uses a
lot of bright colors and as you can see
the blue dots in this picture kind of
express the movement of Daisy as
she is chasing her ball. Also notice
the lines on the couch are not
straight they are more diagonal
which suggests movement according
to the book (pg 35).

4. Line
• In this picture the lines on the couch are straight and thick. According to
the book dominant vertical lines create a static look. Static means lacking
in movement, action, or change. Daisy is tired of playing with her ball in
this picture and is taking a break. As you can see the picture is in a sort of
chronological order. In the top picture Daisy is sleeping, next, Daisy is
yawning as she wakes up and so on. Finally on the bottom, she is once
again getting ready to play with her ball. There is very little movement in
these picture which is why the lines are vertical.

5. Shape
• Shape is a 2-D form representing
an object (textbook pg. 35).
These shapes can be simple or
complex. This page in the book is
simple and straight to the point
but the ball in this picture is an
angular shape. Angular shapes
depict objects built by humans
(pg. 35). The ball is one of the
“main characters” so to speak of
the book and it is man-made
(why it is angular). Also notice
the shape of the ears on Daisy,
her ears are perked up in this
picture because she is happy!

6. Color
If you look at this picture Roschka
chnaged the value of the colors in
the sky. Value is the lightness or
darkness of the color, achieved by
adding black or white (pg 35 of
textbook). Roschka made the color
of the sky gloomy because Daisy
had popped her ball. She is no
longer happy but instead sad. The
background is also a solid white,
where in a lot of his other pictures it
has some yellow, blue and green.

7. Texture
•
In this picture and all of the others Roschka draws Daisy with a rough outline. The
body is drawn with a wavy line and I think he is trying to depict a 3-D image here.
Also if you notice in the top left of the picture there are lines above the ball, and
Roschka is trying to show you that the ball is being thrown in the air. In the left
picture, the drawing of Daisy on the right has lines underneath her and he is
creating texture with those lines to show there is a floor underneath her.

8. Composition
•
In the text book it says that the artist shows composition by arranging the elements on each page,
including the printed type, the artist tries to obtain an effective balance between unity and variety
and creates visual patterns that may be carried on from page to page (pg 36). Throughout the
book, Roschka mostly uses the light yellow, blue, and green blotches in the background. He also
always has the balls as bright colors because they resemble the happiness of Daisy. All of these
pictures are well balanced and show Dais going back and forth while playing.