Picturing Text: The Contemporary Children's Picturebook

Reading Contemporary Picturebooks takes a look at one of the most vibrant branches of children's literature - the modern picturebook. This exciting new book takes a sample of contemporary picturebooks and closely examines the features that make them distinctive and then suggests a way of characterising the 'interanimation' of words and pictures that is the essence of the form. The reasons for the picturebook's vitality and flexibility are also explored and the close bond between the picturebook and its readers is analyzed. Advances in our understanding of how visual images are organized are examined and the book concludes with an attempt to redescribe the picturebook in such a way that pictures, readers and text may be drawn together. Picturing Text will be of interest to students, teachers and researchers interested in reading, children's literature and media studies.

Ken Marantz <%ISBN%>0415208866 - Children's Literature

This scholarly analysis of picturebooks, spelled as one word "to reflect the compound nature of the artifact," is an effort to get us to "look at it whole." Lewis's insights and speculations add to those in the recent and equally comprehensive How Picturebooks Work by Nikolajeva and Scott (Garland Press), a more international study. His eight chapters and two appendices deal with such concerns as the "ecology of the picturebook," post-modernism, what picturebooks mean, and a reflection on the state of the art in modern picturebooks. Many examples, primarily from British titles, demonstrate his arguments. He also draws on the writings of others like Wittgenstein for philosophical input, and Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen's attempts to create a Grammar of Visual Design. The exposition is challenging, as much for its insistence that we pay attention to may qualities of the genre we have neglected as for the demands it makes on our intellectual abilities. As Lewis takes us into the pages of picturebooks, stopping to survey some and puzzle over our multiple responses, we are offered numerous insights to use in future readings and to help make the experiences more profound and enjoyable. 2001, RoutledgeFalmer,