Editorial

Of Invisible and Wordless Picturebooks

I recently attended a picturebooks conference where one of the presentations was about picturebooks without pictures—picturebooks that had been turned into audiobooks, that is. Of course, audiobooks can be used with illustrations, simply as reading support. The book can still be there, illustrations and all. But the focus of this presentation was when the audiobook is what you have and where there is no visual content, only an “invisible” yet audible picturebook.

An underlying rationale for invisible picturebooks is to give blind children access to stories that they would otherwise be barred from experiencing. Another reason is that such audio-only versions have their uses with seeing children as well, for instance, in allowing them to picture the stories themselves. Moreover, some of these audio picturebooks appear to work well in the audio format only.

At the same time, it is obvious that visually complex and rich picturebooks are simplified in the process and that the rich interplay between the visual and the verbal is reduced. Several examples were given of how things like visual irony were lost in audio translation, yet it was also recognized that voice and soundtrack (ambient, atmospheric sounds, for instance) to some extent could be used to compensate the lack of visual signifiers. Anyway, it seems clear that this is an emerging field. I am sure we’ll see more audio picturebooks in the future, and I am certain that we will see (and hear!) of interesting developments in this area.

Now, if audio-only renditions of picturebooks privilege word and sound over the visual and iconic, wordless picturebooks do the opposite. In wordless picturebooks, the visual is preeminent. In such books, shapes, lines, spreads, panels, pages, spreads, colors, texture, size, sequencing, and art style are the building blocks of the story. The narrative content is driven by images and the turning of pages; the atmosphere is suggested by the play of colors and hues; the information content is provided through observable details.

Wordless picturebooks are not really “wordless.” When following the visual narrative, or story fragments, words are formed, and plots take form in the mind of the silent, solitary reader. Alternatively, words are formulated and spoken in the act of reading, as when wordless picturebooks are shared and read to a child or a whole group of children. Thus, wordless picturebooks invite readers/viewers to perform a dialogic style of reading. The implication is that these are books that are “unscripted” rather than “wordless”—unscripted picturebooks.

The great benefit of the wordless, unscripted picturebooks is that they can be interpreted and enjoyed in any language. The unfixed state of wordless picturebooks also means that they can be used on different levels and with different age groups. This is why IBBY’s 2012 establishment of a library of “Silent Books” on the remote Mediterranean island of Lampedusa—to be used by local and immigrant children, mainly from Africa and the Middle East—has been so successful. The initiative has also resulted in an honor list of the ten best silent picturebooks, announced annually since 2013 at the Bologna Book Fair.

The books in the collection—over one hundred from over twenty countries—are all donated by IBBY’s national sections. One set was delivered to the library in Lampedusa, and another became part of a travelling exhibition. In this issue of Bookbird, Penni Cotton shows how this travelling exhibition was used to engage school children in the small French town of Montolieu in various ways.

Picturebooks are also featured in two of the full-length articles in this issue. Christèle Maizonniaux discusses the challenges and possibilities, linguistic as well as cultural, involved in using francophone picturebooks with Australian university students who are studying French at tertiary level. Methodologically different yet sharing the basic premise of using picturebooks in university education (but with the ulterior motive of stimulating her students to use these books in their own teaching), Jessica Whitelaw discusses what she calls “disquieting picturebooks”: books that address sensitive issues, or are aesthetically complex, or are politically radical.

There is a great deal more of visual content in this...