A literature course entitled "The Victorian Illustrated Book: A Marriage of Image and Word," offered at Skidmore College in New York, was designed to help students make connections between art and literature. Based on the premise that illustrations in Victorian books can be "decoded" much like a written text, students were introduced to illustrations from Charles Dickens'"Oliver Twist" and Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" and spent time examining the illustrations to determine their faithfulness to the text and how they elaborated upon the narrative. Students also read research that familiarized them with Victorian artistic concerns, such as the language of symbols in artwork, and the Victorian preoccupation with the pastoral, death, and the family. An assignment called for students to examine Dante Gabriel Rosetti's painting "Found" and decode its symbols. More successful students learned not only to decode individual symbols but make ideational connections by seeing the symbols as a whole, as a "text" to be read. During the second month of the course, students were able to see how an illustration highlights a text or provides essential information. As the course neared its end, students had progressed to a point where most easily made ideational connections between the arts, and occasionally made insightful connections between Victorian and modern concerns. The nature of this course seems to encourage students to make a full range of connections. (JC)