Picturebooks: Representation and Narration
Edited by Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
Series Editor: Philip Nel
Routledge – 2014 – 240 pages
This volume discusses the aesthetic and cognitive challenges of modern picturebooks from different countries, such as Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, and USA. The overarching issue concerns the mutual relationship between representation and narration by means of the picturebooks’ multimodal character. Moreover, this volume includes the main lines of debate and approaches to picturebooks by international leading researchers in the field. Topics covered are the impact of paratexts and interpictorial allusions, the relationship between artists’ books, crossover picturebooks, and picturebooks for adults, the narrative defiance of wordless picturebooks, the representation of emotions in images and text, and the depiction of hybrid characters in picturebooks. The enlargement of the picturebook corpus beyond an Anglo-American picturebook canon opens up new horizons and highlights the diverging styles and genre shifts in modern picturebooks. This tendency also demonstrates the influence of specific authors and illustrators on the appreciation of the picturebook genre, as in the case of Astrid Lindgren’s picturebooks and the picturebooks created by renowned illustrators, such as Anthony Browne, Wolf Erlbruch, Stian Hole, and Bruno Munari. This book will be the definite contribution to contemporary picturebook research for many years to come.
Introduction: Picturebooks between Representation and Narration Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer Part 1: Crossing Genre Boundaries: Artists’ Books, Wordless Picturebooks and Picturebooks for Adults 1. Picturebooks for Adults Åse Marie Ommundsen 2. Artists’ Books, Altered Books and Picturebooks Carole Scott 3. The Art of Visual Storytelling: Formal Strategies in Wordless Picturebooks Sandra L. Beckett 4. Texts and Peritexts in Wordless and Almost Wordless Picturebooks Emma Bosch 5. Wordless Picturebooks: Critical and Educational Perspectives on Meaning-making Evelyn Arizpe Part 2: Change, Emotions, and Hybridity: Characters in Picturebooks 6. 'Thought and dream are heavenly vehicles'. Character, Bildung, and Aesthetics in Stian Hole's Garmann Triology (2006-2010) Nina Christensen 7. "The Penguin Looked Sad": Picturebooks, Empathy, and Theory of Mind Maria Nikolajeva 8. Understanding the Matchstick Man. Aesthetic and Narrative Properties of a Hybrid Picturebook Character Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Jörg Meibauer Part 3: Interpictoriality and Visual Clues in Picturebooks 9. An Approximation to Intertextuality in Picturebooks: Anthony Browne and his Hypotexts Maria José Lobato and Beatriz Hoster Cabo 10. Audience, Theme, and Symbolism in Wolf Erlbruch’s Picturebook "Duck, Death and th Tulip" Janet Evans 11. Learn to Read. Learn to Live. The Role of Books and Book Collections in Picturebooks Nina Goga 12. Prologue and Epilogue Pictures s in Astrid Lindgren’s Picturebooks Agnes-Margrethe Bjorvand
Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer is Professor in the German Department at the University of Tübingen, Germany. She held the position of guest professor for children’s literature at the University of Växjö, Sweden, and the University of Vienna, Austria. She is editor of Emergent Literacy. Children’s books from 0 to 3 (2011), and co-editor of New Directions in Picturebook Research (2010), and Beyond Pippi Longstocking. Intermedial and International Aspects of Astrid Lindgren’s Works (2011).