Among the five of Chris Van Allsburg’s children’s books that I have been examining, there are recurring elements within the points of views used throughout each book. According to Charles A. Temple, Miriam A. Martinez, and Junko Yokota in their book Children’s Books in Children’s Hands, “point of view is the perspective from which the events in a story are perceived and narrated” (Temple, Martinez, & Yokota, 2006, p. 40). In all of Chris Van Allsburg’s books that I have analyzed, he uses the same point of view throughout to tell each of the stories, and that is third person narration. It is important to note that Chris Van Allsburg uses a third person omniscient point of view, which is when the story is told from the viewpoint of an outside narrator who gets…show more content… For example, the third person narration allows for the reader to get into the head of Minna Shaw on multiple occasions. “One morning Minna Shaw was still in bed when she heard a noise coming from the kitchen. She peeked in and saw something that made her heart jump” (Van Allsburg, The Widow's Broom, 1992, p. 11). During this section of the book, the use of third person narration lets the reader see Minna Shaw’s first thoughts towards the broom and then how they change once she sees that it will do no harm to her. By telling the story through third person omniscience the reader also gets to see what everyone in the town is thinking about the magical broom. Upon showing her neighbors her magical broom, “Mr. Spivey was horrified. ‘This is a wicked, wicked thing,’ he said. ‘This is the devil…’ Mr. Spivey then became red-faced with anger” (Van Allsburg, The Widow's Broom, 1992, p. 13). In The Widow’s Broom, the reader would never be able to see exactly how frightened Mr. Spivey was of the widow’s broom if it wasn’t written in third
