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Commenting on the role of the illustrator and illustrations in children’s books in a letter from 1976, Tove Jansson describes a tendency she has noted in children’s books: “The illustrations depict curiously artsy decorations and collages you could easily imagine on a cushion or a teapot. You can’t enter their pictures. They don’t say anything” (Österlund & Laukka,
Jansson argues that the visual storytelling in children’s literature needs to go beyond the decorative; it needs to be carried forward by a story, by a visual narration. In the autumn of 2016 a Nordic conference on the theme of “Focusing on the Picture” was arranged at the Swedish Institute for Children’s Books, which addressed the role of the picture in children’s books and discussed theoretical approaches to the topic. Picking up where the conference left off,
In recent decades we have witnessed a visual turn in culture at large. This turn is particularly evident when it comes to the reception of picturebooks. In addition, we see a growing interest in the use of ground-breaking hybrid forms of visual and textual narration in stories for children and young adults – not only in graphic novels, but also in the increased use of visual elements in children’s and young adult novels. The visual turn creates partly new frames for narration and calls for a new visual literacy. As Kristin Hallberg pointed out as early as 1982, reading children’s literature means interpreting text and picture as a whole. Coining the term iconotext, Hallberg drew attention to the interplay between these different modalities. What defines the interplay between text and picture today? What new terms describing the visuality of children’s books will pave the way for new readings? These nine articles address the theme of visual narration in children’s books.
In the first article of the theme, Elina Druker charts the establishment and expansion of picturebook research in the Nordic countries in general and in Sweden in particular. Druker shows how the field has changed over the years. She describes how picturebook research and its terminology began to take form in the 1980s, and examines the consolidation phase of the 21st century. Druker also reveals the shift from debates over definitions to studies of individual authorships and also, gradually, a broadened view of the meaning of the term “literature”. In particular, she highlights the relationship between picturebook research and neighbouring research fields and media similar to, or bordering on, the picturebook.
The articles in question reflect that today’s research on the picture in children’s literature includes studies focused on media and genre, text and image analysis, digital media studies, reception studies as well as analyses of the field’s methodological and theoretical development. Another research area popular within the field today is the materiality of visual narratives, which includes trends in tinting, shading, book format, paper quality, and tactile elements. We also see a growing interest in interdisciplinary readings, where animal studies, gender studies, posthumanism, body studies, ecocriticism, and other perspectives are used to demonstrate new ways of examining pictures. The discussion of digital children’s literature is particularly lively at the moment.
The articles on the theme of “Focusing on the Picture” examine everything from the role of the picture in translated literature, readers’ comments online about visual narration, and fan art to imaginary pictures in readings of crossover authorships. The range of topics reflects the diversity of visual studies, in terms of both theory and material, within the field of children’s literature. The articles can also be seen as illustrative examples of contemporary picturebook research, and they give an idea of the visual repertoires prominent in late-modern children’s literature. They also address the influences from other picture media that can be found in children’s literature, and how to approach these through the use of interdisciplinary methods.
Using online reviews of Jakob Wegelius’
Maria Pujol-Valls compares the Spanish translation of Norwegian author Maria Parr’s novel
In his multimodal analysis of Martin Widmark and Helena Willis’
Tuva Haglund studies the function of fan art – art created online by fans – in digital communities where readers create pictures based on their reading experiences and share their work online. The material consists of pictures of Linnéa and Vanessa in Sara Bergmark Elfgren and Mats Strandberg’s Engelsfors trilogy (2011–2013) and of Hermione in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books (1997–2007). With the help of concepts such as affective hermeneutics, Haglund reveals how reader activity online is used to explore romantic relationships between the characters as well as to depict Hermione as black.
Ever since Kristin Hallberg coined the term iconotext in the early 1980s, it has played a central role in Nordic picturebook research. Here, Hallberg revisits the notion of iconotext in her analysis of the motif of the naked child in Mollie Faustman’s children’s cartoon “Tuttan och Putte” from the 1920s and 1930s as well as in her causeries under the pen name Vagabonde. Hallberg contextualizes Faustman’s work by discussing it in relation to movements such as naturism and vitalism, and considers the motif of the naked child from an art historical perspective. By exploring the historical context of Faustman’s depictions of naked children, the study offers a welcome depth to the relationship between nudity and childhood in contemporary culture.
Åse Marie Ommundsen and Rebecca Stubsjøen read the Norwegian picturebook
Moreover, Per Israelson explores how the past is pictured in the graphic novels
Much remains to uncover when it comes to the theme of “Focusing on the Picture”. For example, has picturebook criticism changed over the years? How do illustrators and picturebook artists define their picture poetics? Tove Jansson’s credo is that there needs to be a narrative depth: “In pictures for children, there should always be something left unexplained, a path where the illustrator/writer stops, but which the child continues down alone” (Österlund & Laukka,