Design and How! The history, theory and impact of Virginia Lee Burton’s design pedagogy

Design and How! The history, theory and impact of Virginia Lee Burton’s design pedagogy examines the career, work and design pedagogy of artist and illustrator Virginia Lee Burton. Burton is known for her illustrated children’s books such as Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel and The Little House . The renown of Burton’s books has reduced her to the role of children’s book illustrator and mother, sequestering her career into a blind spot of illustration history. This article analyses the tensions between the successful aspects of Burton’s unpublished design pedagogy as a systematized practice, and how the classed and raced ideologies that contextualize her lessons complicate her original mission. Through investigating Burton’s successes and shortcomings, this article explores what Burton’s lessons can teach scholars and practitioners today about what it means to make an accessible pedagogy.