Near and Far: Gutter Use in Stevie

John Steptoe’s Stevie is the story of a boy, Bobby, who learns to share his house and his life with another young boy named Stevie. Originally published in 1969, Stevie’s design feels different than a contemporary picturebook. Many of its pages are not illustrated at all, and the ones that are primarily are single-page images with white text pages. However, there are a few exceptions to this rule that stand out in part to their uniqueness, and their use of the book’s gutter to enhance storytelling.

This is exactly the strategy used on the page in which Stevie arrives to the protagonist’s house. This spread’s illustration rests primarily on the recto page, and shows the intimate moment in which Stevie says goodbye to his mother. Bobby’s mother is also present, though only her torso is visible. On the other side of the gutter is Bobby, leaning against it with his face turned outward and ear to the goings-on beside him. From the text, the reader knows Bobby “stayed out in the hall to listen” and the gutter has been utilized in creating the separation between Bobby and the other actors in the illustration, despite their intense physical proximity. Of this strategy, Megan Dowd Lambert has this to say: “Artists may push beyond mere avoidance of the gutter to enhance a visual separation between the verso and the recto and exploit the gutter as a visual or physical barrier” (31). Steptoe’s illustration does just this. In spanning the gutter this way, the illustration allows the gutter to serve as the physical wall between Bobby and the kitchen where the scene is unfolding while still allowing the illustration to not feel cramped, and without there being a physically drawn line between the characters that might upset the flow of the piece. It is somehow rendered seamless through its utilization of this physical seam. The gutter has also created an emotional distance in the scene by placing Bobby outside of the intimate mother-son moment, and as far removed from his own mother as possible. The reader can pick up on Bobby’s hesitant feelings on the situation simply by looking at this image and his placement within it.

A great deal of Stevie is about the internal: how Bobby feels, and what effect Stevie’s presence has on his life. Subtle touches like the use of this gutter do a good deal of work in creating emotional complexity within the book. In this spread, Bobby’s physical separation becomes an emotional one, too.

Works Cited

Lambert, Megan Dowd. “Picturebooks and Page Layout.” The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks. Ed. Bettina Kummerling-Meibaurer. Routledge 2018

Steptoe, John. Stevie. Harper & Row, 1969.

Stats: CIP Fall 2022, Laramie Hearn. Installment #2: Design. 417 words