Le livre et l'enfant. Recueil de textes de Michel Defourny (review)

Michel Defourny, Belgian scholar of Romance languages and Oriental studies, wrote his doctoral dissertation on Hindu mythology. It was the Indian fairy tale that led him to take up children's literature as a field of study. Following forty years of research and teaching, most recently at Liège University, the former representative of Belgium's francophone children's literature field is now retired. To commemorate his contribution to the field, this anthology features select talks about illustrated children's books, essays from renowned periodicals, and newspaper articles.

selection reflects the wide range of Defourny's research interests: contributions on early literacy are followed by a historical survey of children's literature; observations on the aesthetic aspect of picture books in general complement reflections on the particularities of the picture book genre in relation to other literary and artistic genres. The essay, „Instruire et distraire. L'image documentaire„ (Instruct and amuse. The documentary image), for example, analyzes the characteristics of the illustrated nonfiction book. While some contributions feature an author or illustrator such as Grégoire Solotareff, or a fairy tale character such as Cinderella, others present series such as Archimède published by the French publishing house L'école des loisirs.

Michel Defourny's intimate knowledge of his country's literature (especially the Belgian French community), as well as his expertise in foreign literature and cultures (notably his contributions on the character of Savitri from the Indian epic Mahabharata or the English fairy tale The Story of the Three Bears) are truly impressive. Thanks to this anthology, readers will now be able to share at least part of Defourny's profound and vast knowledge of international children's literature.