Issues of Control and Agency in Staged Metafictive Picture Books

This article explores issues of control and agency in a subgenre of metafictive picture books that I term “staged metafictive” picture books. In these books, real authors––in the two books examined here, Mac Barnett and Adam Rex, and Emily Gravett—create characters who perform the roles of “author” and/or “illustrator” by creating their own narratives. I argue that conflating the roles of creators, characters, and readers creates multiple levels of reality in these books, which in turn gives the real reader merely an illusion of agency over the narrative.