It is not easy to recreate their proper setting during a talk like this.
Book illustrations tend to take on independent lives if they are disassociated from their supporting text.
Books are about holding them in your hand.
Reading and looking at books is an intimate relationship and turning pages is part of this experience. (I include the iPad and the Kindle in the same way as a book, by the way).
The essence of the form of a book is the fact that it has pages.
An exhibition completely removes this intimacy as does looking at them on slides during lectures.

There are several questions we have to think about before embarking on an illustration of a narrative and interpreting the text.
Such as:

Which passage of the text shall be illustrated?
When does the event in the narrative take place?
Where does the action happen?
Who takes part in it and what do the characters look like?
What are the various objects or props that are needed in the picture?
And how can visual reference be sought?