Picturebooks

Beyond the Borders of Art, Narrative and Culture

Evelyn Arizpe, Maureen Farrell, Julie McAdam, Evelyn Arizpe, Maureen Farrell, Julie McAdam

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317850304
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Literatur
• Categoría: Literaturkritik Geschichte & Theorie

The picturebook is now recognized as a sophisticated art form that has provided a space for some of the most exciting innovations in the field of children's literature. This book brings together the work of expert scholars from the UK, the USA and Europe to present original theoretical perspectives and new research on picturebooks and their readers.

The authors draw on a variety of disciplines such as art and cultural history, semiotics, philosophy, cultural geography, visual literacy, education and literary theory in order to revisit the question of what a picturebook is, and how the best authors and illustrators meet and exceed artistic, narrative and cultural expectations. The book looks at the socio-historical conditions of different times and countries in which a range of picturebooks have been created, pointing out variations but also highlighting commonalities. It also discusses what the stretching of borders may mean for new generations of readers, and what contemporary children themselves have to say about picturebooks.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship.

INTRODUCTION

EVELYN ARIZPE, MAUREEN A. FARRELL, and JULIE MCADAM

School of Education and Visual Journeys Research Term, University of Glasgow, Scotland

When we wrote the editorial for this collection of articles, initially published in a special issue of the journal New Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship in 2011, Julia Donaldson had just taken over as Children’s Laureate from Anthony Browne, the award-winning illustrator who devoted much of his time in this role to raising the profile of picturebooks and promoting visual literacy. We were certain that the focus on both words and pictures would continue during Donaldson’s period as Children’s Laureate given that, together with illustrator Axel Scheffler, she has created several award-winning picturebooks including that instant classic: The Gruffalo. Now, as we write this Introduction, we have seen the extent of Donaldson’s commitment to supporting public libraries, an essential task in these difficult financial times in the United Kingdom because one of the things libraries can do is bring together children and the best picturebooks—and, by this, we mean picturebooks that challenge readers, that take readers beyond literal meanings, out of their “comfort zone” and into complex thinking about relationships, the environment, war, reality, and even death. As we all know, in this age where marketing rules, there are many bland and boring illustrated books for children and there are still some parents, teachers, librarians, and educationalists who consider a picturebook to be any simple text with pictures for a very young, pre-literate audience and regard any complex or controversial aspects with suspicion. Fortunately, there are also many who now recognize the picturebook as a sophisticated art form that has provided a space for some of the most exciting innovations in the field of children’s literature (sometimes even going beyond innovations in adult literature).

This book brings together nine chapters by a group of expert international scholars, based in the United States, Europe, and the United Kingdom, who present original theoretical perspectives and new research on picturebooks and their readers. The chapters not only provide evidence of the ways in which the best authors and illustrators stretch artistic, narrative, and cultural expectations beyond the traditional stereotype of a picturebook but also how academics and researchers draw on disciplines such as art and cultural history, semiotics, philosophy, cultural geography, literary theory, and visual literacy to do so. The authors revisit the question of what a picturebook is as an object using cultural, artistic, literary and educational perspectives. Some of them look at the socio-historical conditions in which picturebooks have been created in different countries. Some of them point out the variations between picturebooks from different cultures and languages but also highlight the commonalities between them, for example in the appearance of often overlooked but greatly significant objects. The references to international picturebooks are a reminder of the wealth of excellent publications outside the United Kingdom that we should be more aware of. Finally, the authors consider what the stretching of borders may mean for new generations of readers and what contemporary children themselves have to say about them.

In the opening chapter, Barbara Kiefer returns to the origins of art and bookmaking to show how historical changes in technology, culture, and society have influenced the picturebook as an art object and developed it into a dynamic genre. She highlights the commonalities in inspiration and intent between artists and illustrators across the centuries, as they create beautiful illustrations that sometimes literally breach the visual borders and often challenge a confined view of childhood.

It is true that this challenge also raises questions about whether some books are really for children or whether they are just another medium for conducting artistic experiments or communicating particular ideologies. Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Jörg Meibauer tackle this issue in Chapter 2 through the development of the concept of “strangeness” through an analysis of German Pop Art picturebooks from the middle of the twentieth century, some of which even by contemporary standards go beyond the borders of narrative expectations and sense. They argue that the view of childhood as a time of openness to new experiences led Pop Art artists to invite readers to transgress the boundaries of conventions and knowledge of the function and meaning of pictures and text. It led to some interesting experiments such as one in 1970 where a picturebook (with a preface by Jean Piaget) was created based on children’s responses to another picturebook. The authors also suggest these books are the precursors of what we now consider “postmodern” picturebooks.

Confined views of what constitutes a picturebook story are also challenged by illustrators through the “paratext,” that is, any features that go beyond the actual text but actively enhance it in some way. In Chapter 3, Teresa Duran and Emma Bosch examine the role of endpapers in an extensive corpus of picturebooks in several languages, making us think anew about this often overlooked feature. They describe how endpapers can offer clues, humor, irony, surprises, and sometimes even a “bonus track” for attentive readers.

Chapters 4 and 5 continue with an exploration of visual signifiers that take readers into spaces where narrative interacts with notions of childhood and cultural practices. Maria Nikolajeva and Liz Taylor’s in-depth analysis of beds in picturebooks includes both the portrayal and function of this everyday (or rather, everynight) material object along with bedrooms, bedding, and bedtime. The bedtime space which, as the authors argue, is a “highly ambivalent topos,” straddles the border between the public and the private as well as between reality and fantasy. The surprising breadth of their examples, drawn from a wide range of international picturebooks, reveals this space as a fundamental site of power negotiations between children and adults.

Cultural signifiers, power, and the position of the child subject are also the considered in Jean Webb’s chapter as she takes us through her reading of a “strange” or, more exactly, a “surreal” picturebook in its English version, When We Lived in Uncle’s Hat by Peter Stamm and Jutta Bauer. But, these signifiers go beyond the picturebook itself, extending into the transformations undergone by the words and pictures during translation and for publicity as well as into the reading offered by the notes for teachers. Webb challenges the simplistic reading suggested by these notes by highlighting the more subtle connections required from the reader for understanding the different atmospheres and emotions that deal with displacement, dislocation, and family relationships. Yet these are not “real” locations; as Webb argues, the “text moves beyond the boundaries of ‘normal’ existence” into the realm of the imagination, demanding a different reading. She shows how the philosophical lenses of both surrealism and existentialism are helpful in meeting this demand.

Cultural borders are the main focus of Maureen A. Farrell’s whirlwind tour of Scottish texts and images in Chapter 6 as she raises questions about what it means to stay within or go beyond the borders of a particular culture. Text and image in multicultural picturebooks are often a source of debate: How far should inherited boundaries be respected and preserved? Should new cultural combinations and cosmopolitanism be encouraged? Who is entitled to portray a particular cultural context? Seeking answers to these questions, Farrell discusses a range of images from well-loved comics to ancient ballads to contemporary picturebooks. She shows how traditional stereotypes are being subverted and new cosmopolitan identities that are rooted in the local but that look to the global provide the opportunity for a more distinct national identity and at the same time a more inclusive one.

The final three chapters consider the crossing of borders from the perspective of the readers. They look at the responses of readers from different countries and backgrounds highlighting the potential of picturebooks for exploring (among other things) art, illustration, and design; the relationship between text and image; and other places and cultures. In Chapter 7, Janet Evans returns to the question previously raised about complex and controversial subject matter as she discusses children’s responses to another “strange” picturebook that shares some of the existential questions of When We Lived in Uncle’s Hat in terms of happiness, relationships, and the possession of material objects. The children in Evans’ study reflect and talk about the “purpose of life” based on Colin Thompson and Amy Lissiat’s book, The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley (2005). Evans presents evidence that participating in collaborative discussion about a picturebook that invites children to go beyond the words and the images through the peritext, the intertextual references, and the links to current world events can be a powerful way of increasing readers’ understanding and engagement with ideas.

A similar situation is presented in the next two chapters which present findings related to the two wordless picturebooks read by children within the context of a research project, Visual Journeys.¹ Their wordless nature take readers beyond the borders of written language and challenge readers to find other ways of “filling the gaps.” In Chapter 8, Brenda Bellorín and María Cecilia Silva-Díaz look at the analysis of a group discussion around The Arrival by Shaun Tan to see how young readers fill the indeterminacies created by visual language which are particularly related to the mental processes of the characters. Without the words to help, readers are forced to rely on visual clues and their own experiences to interpret thoughts and emotions. The other wordless book used in the project, Flotsam by David Wiesner, also demanded close review. In the final chapter, Evelyn Arizpe and Julie McAdam describe how responding to this book through a photographic activity allowed insights into the meaning-making processes of readers. Given that the theme of the picturebook is the power and mystery of photographs and that Wiesner plays with many of the techniques of photography to tell its story, this activity turned out to be a way for a group of diverse readers, which included immigrant children, to control representations of their identity and, at the same time, increase awareness of the construction and metalanguage of image.

The implication that emerges from this collection of scholarly research is that space for children to look and talk about picturebooks is an essential part of reading—both in and out of school and with both peers and adults. As twenty-first century children become more used to fast-moving images on screens, they need to be reminded to stop and look closely, to discover the pleasure of finding clues and making meaning with them, particularly when they are challenged to go beyond their usual expectations. Complex picturebooks do stir up all sorts of emotions, fear, sadness, joy, but we must trust the child reader to handle this experience—or to reject it or ask or show signs of needing help if they cannot. What picturebooks offer is just too important to be left to grownups’ responses, however well-intentioned they may be. Children can also be encouraged to extend picturebook reading through other creative activities, for example, as editors who work with educational settings, we could image an exercise in visual literacy that encouraged young readers to find books with interesting endpapers, to classify them using the typology similar to that described by Duran and Bosch and to draw their own endpapers for particular books.

Included in this space and in the process of discovery should be picturebooks that go beyond one’s own culture and language. It is perhaps understandable that British audiences fail to look beyond publications in English, given the wealth of picturebooks that exist in this language, but this produces an insular and narrow perspective that misses out on the fascinating developments in Europe and in other countries. Thanks to a few determined publishers such as Winged Chariot, translations of some recent European picturebooks, such as the aforementioned one examined by Jean Webb, are now available in English. However, many of those mentioned by other contributors would also be well worth translating. We thus take advantage of this Introduction to call to teachers, librarians, publishers, and others involved in promoting and marketing books to go beyond national and cultural frontiers.

Most of these chapters were originally presented as papers in the second conference on Picturebook Research held at the University of Glasgow in 2009 “Beyond Borders: Art, narrative and culture in picturebooks.” The aim of this ongoing series of conferences is to provide a space for ideas and discussion on new theoretical perspectives and cutting-edge research into the burgeoning picturebook market and their readers. This collection builds on previous publications resulting from this conference series: New Impulses in Picturebook Research edited by Kümmerling-Meibauer, Colomer, and Silva-Díaz, published in English (Routledge) and also in Spanish (Banco del Libro/GRETEL) and the forthcoming Aesthetic and Cognitive Challenges of the Picturebook (Routledge) also edited by Kümmerling-Meibauer. As the editors, we would like to thank all the contributors to the present volume for their insightful contributions and we are grateful for their hard work and patience. We were delighted that Sally Maynard accepted our proposal for the original special issue and thank her for all her encouragement. We are also grateful to Emily Ross, our Routledge editor, for her support during the process of its publication in book form.

We hope that this collection will be successful in continuing to provide new vistas for picturebook studies, vistas which go beyond all kinds of borders.² We want to be able to look to a future where the borders are flexible and permeable, where the potential of picturebooks can reach a diversity of readers through different mediums, literary, and pedagogic approaches: a future that includes the recovery of lesser known, experimental perhaps, picturebooks that can encourage creativity and international exchange not only among young children but also among adolescents and adults.

Notes

1  The aim of this on-going project is to explore how the children construct meaning from visual images in complex narratives in order to create strategies that will develop their critical literacy skills, as well as help them reflect on their own or others’ experiences of migration, journeys, and foreign worlds. The international partners involved in the project are the University of Glasgow; the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Teachers College, Columbia University; the Australian Catholic University, NSW, and the University of Bologna. Visual Journeys was funded in the UK by grants from the Faculty of Education, University of Glasgow, and the United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA) (see Arizpe, Colomer and Martínez-Roldán, Visual Journeys through Wordless Picturebooks: An International Inquiry with Immigrant Children, forthcoming 2013, Bloomsbury Academic). The work continues to be developed in Glasgow through a grant from The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

2  As an indication of the growing interest in picturebook research, a JISCMail group called New Directions in Picturebook Research, was set up to continue scholarly exchange on this topic. It gained 140 subscribers from all over the world in the first two weeks of opening. https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=PICTUREBOOKRESEARCH

WHAT IS A PICTUREBOOK? ACROSS THE BORDERS OF HISTORY

BARBARA KIEFER

The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA

In this article I contemplate the ideas of art, narrative, and culture in picturebooks from a historical perspective. In particular, I define a picturebook as a visual verbal entity and explore the question, “How has the form of the picturebook manifested itself throughout human history?” I look at how changes in technology, culture, and society have influenced the picturebook as an art object from prehistoric times to the present day. Finally, I examine the role of the picturebook artist across the centuries and find common similarities in inspiration, intent, and motivation that link these artists despite the differences in the form and audience for picturebooks over time.

Wondering about children’s preference for style in picturebooks, I asked a seven-year-old if Chris Van Allsburg’s black and white illustrations in Jumanji would have been better in color. ““Pictures don’t have to be in color … It’s harder when it’s in black and white. It takes more time and you don’t just whip through the book.… You like to take time,” he replied.” What more could one hope for in children’s responses to picturebooks: to take time with a book.

Questions regarding children and picturebooks have been the focus of much of my research as I studied children ages 6 through 11 in school classrooms (Kiefer). I began my research with a rather superficial question—“What type of illustrations do children like in picturebooks.” I have since realized that a better question is “How do they respond to a variety of picturebooks in a variety of styles and formats?” This allowed me to focus more broadly on the wide range of cognitive and emotional reactions that children may have and on the ways in which responses change over time.

Indeed, I found that the children ages 6–11 that I studied were intent on making meaning of the art that they were seeing. Often these children helped me to look at picturebooks more carefully and to see things that I had never understood in the illustrations, despite my Bachelor of Arts in Art education.

Moreover, I found that in order to better understand the responses of modern day children I had to better un...