New Directions in Picture book Research (review)

In their introduction, the editors set the focus of this book as the exploration of the cognitive and aesthetic aspects of picture book research. The chapters are based on papers first given at a conference with the same theme held in Barcelona in 2007. During a time of standardization in education—especially in the United States, where forty-four states have adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which rely solely on the “close reading” of the New Criticism literary movement of the 1920s—this volume is a welcome reminder that there are multiple approaches to reading and viewing books. Of particular note is that throughout the book, authors ground their work in multimodality, reception, and reader response, which foster aesthetic transactions, in contrast to information processing models that limit children’s participation.

The book is organized into three parts: in part one, “Picturebooks, Literacy, and Cultural Context,” Perry Nodelman analyzes how Nan Gregory’s Amber Waiting empowers children, offering them knowledge adults often try to suppress; Maria Nikolajeva synthesizes Roland Barthes’s semiotic work to undergird the study of children’s picture books; and Teresa Colomer analyzes changes in public and private spaces in picture books over time, from the bedroom and schoolyard to more active—though sometimes sentimental—participation in the world. Nina Christensen provides a historical context, contrasting expectations of the child reader in eighteenth- and twenty-first-century picture books. Sandra Beckett expands on historical contexts, demonstrating the ways contemporary illustrators allude to artists who preceded them out of homage—or, perhaps, as Beckett suggests, revenge. Whatever the reasons, Beckett makes an important point: All artists stand on the shoulders of others, and to allude is not to slack; Shakespeare, as it has often been pointed out, did not invent plot. Of special interest is Evelyn Arizpe’s work using picture books with immigrants and children of color. She writes that “Children make sense of the world and interpret their experiences according to familial and social and cultural background” (70), a critical reminder for scholars and teachers that in sharing picture books with children, culture and context matter.

In part two, “Picturebooks and Storytelling,” Carole Scott discusses frame-making and frame-breaking in picture books; she highlights, among other frame-breakers, Do Not Go Around the Edges by Daisy Utemorrah, an account of the author’s removal from her aboriginal culture to become a domestic in the White world. The framing of art, poetry, and design challenges traditional boundaries, recreating the clash of cultures Utemorrah experienced. In their chapter on endings in picture books, Brenda Bellorín and Cecilia Silva-Díaz use popular films as a counterpoint to selected picture books with surprise endings. The authors also share Venezuelan children’s responses to surprise-ending books; they embrace both humor and surprise. In her analysis of the wordless picture book L’Orage (“The Thunderstorm”) by Anne Brouillard, Isabelle Nières-Chevrel shows how Brouillard casts the child reader as a co-constructer of meaning and co-storyteller in visual literacy, a respectful gesture in an era when the child is too often constructed as a receptacle of preordained knowledge. Elina Druker highlights storytelling developments in Nordic countries in the 1950s, focusing on the delightful Historien om nägom (“The Story about Somebody”), a hide-and-seek story that epitomizes Nordic Modernism, “where the artist aspired to make arts a part of the society” (148). Similarly, Tomoko Masaki shows how the sculptor Susumu Shingu made his art part of his illustrations for children. As in his sculpture, he brings wind, water, and movement to children’s picture book experiences. Fernando Zaparaín brings his cinematic sensibilities to his discussion of off-screen and blank space, vital components of children’s aesthetic experiences. His discerning comment that a work of art “has as many interpretations as the absences we are able to detect in it” (174) is refreshing, especially here in the United States, where we are being subjected to...