Believable Elements
What elements of this illustration help it to tell
a believable story?
![[Image of the house with the full moon hanging above]](images/tuesvia3.gif)
The author's use of:
Throughout this story, Wiesner's toys with our conventional notions of time. It's
almost as if, by placing events within the confines of time, they become real.
This is emphasized by the clock on the book jacket cover and the sparse text mainly
consisting of time-day notations. In our illustration the idea of time is brought
out subtly, by the moon hanging in the background. As we progress through this
story, we do not follow the frogs on random flights of fancy; rather we follow
a strict chronological sequence -- an accounting of the events between 8:00 pm
and 5:00 am on Tuesday. To a sci-fi aficionado, this is a familiar technique that
adds credibility to any strange tale. 
When looking at the illustrations in Tuesday from an artistic standpoint,
they are so richly textured that it is difficult to believe that they are executed
in watercolor. The illustrator's heavy use of line and hue create images that
are quite realistic, almost as if we are viewing actual photographs. This style,
known as photorealism, helps the reader to believe, if just for the moment, that
these fantastic events can and did occur. This is aided by the author's use of
thinly bordered insets that almost seem to be
individual snapshots of the frogs taken from various perspectives. This photographic
quality is enhanced by the authors use of soft blue hues and sepia yellows in
his palette. When one considers the use of time together with photo-like illustrations,
one wonders that there remains any doubt that these events occurred.
Wiesner employs several literary motifs commonly found in science fiction and
fantasy. Gaze at the image at the top of this page. Do you see:
- a haunted house?
- a full moon?
- an alien invasion?
This image is chock full of the popular icons of paranormal phenomena. These act
as literary devices symbolizing our fear of the unknown and foreshadowing the
strange thing to come. If you think that I'm nuts,
