Today’s class was a more in-depth analysis of Victorian illustration books which I enjoyed greatly. What was most captivating to me was the theoretical concepts we discussed in lecture. I often enjoy learning about such content because they allow me to bring my interpretation of the relationship between image/text to scholarly appropriate writing. In fact, this is something I often struggle with when analyzing text. As Professor Kooistra mentioned, although we have a visual vocabulary in which we use to understand illustrations, that vocabulary, at least for me, is very limited. Therefore, such limitation impedes me from eloquently discussing the thoughts that are forming in my brain. Today’s activity, however, was a great start to getting to both understand the texts we will be studying in the course, as well as learning how to decode such texts when it comes to the style of their illustrations and the themes they apply. Annancy Stories, which was the collection of stories my group was assigned, piqued my interest with its non-Victorian illustrations, and the incorporation of caricature drawings which added visual themes of folklore really highlighted how much visual drawings can take over a written work, and assert its own authority over the text.