A brilliant, almost overwhelming study that treats Maurice Sendak and Trina Schart Hyman with the same attention to detail and nuance that Wayne Booth gives Jane Austen in The Rhetoric of Fiction. . . . An exceptionally rich book, Words About Pictures asks you to think and read and look and look again. It will open your eyes.

—Washington Post Book World

Thoughtful and thought provoking, Nodelman's discussion ranges over topics such as the ways pictures communicate information, style as meaning, the contextual meaning of visual objects, irony, and rhythms of narrative.

—Booklist

Nodelman brings the disciplines of psychology and art history, of semiotics and reader-response theory, as well as insights from an eclectic cadre of other disciplines to this book. Words About Pictures is the most complete theoretical analysis of the genre.

—Wilson Library Bulletin

Words About Pictures is an excellent reference book for critics, scholars and others and perhaps the best available study of the relationship between words and pictures in children's picture books.

—One Minute Book Reviews