The Picturebook as an Educational Resource

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1Literacy is a key component in education at all levels. In Exploring Challenging Picturebooks in Education. International Perspectives on Language and Literature Learning, the editors and contributors argue that the use of picturebooks as a supplement to more traditional, text based, teaching materials can stimulate students’ motivation for reading, and develop their multimodal literacy (p. 1). The volume is the result of an international and interdisciplinary research project and the contributors come from various fields, united by their interest in the picturebook media. Through fifteen chapters, divided into four sections, the authors explore the use of picturebooks in different educational settings, from primary school to tertiary education. The volume includes a large number of illustrations that accompany and enrich the visual analysis performed in the various chapters. In the introduction, the editors discuss the term ‘challenging’ and note that there are two focal points for the discussion of the term throughout the chapters. The first being the properties and affordances of the picturebook and the second the engagement with the book by the readers (p. 8). As shown by the different researchers, neither of the two aspects are understood as fixed, instead they relate to the social and cultural environment where the book is produced and read, as well as the cognitive abilities of the reader. This discussion continues in the two chapters of the first section, Theoretical Perspectives on Challenging Picturebooks in Education, which set the theoretical foundations for the rest of the volume. The first chapter focuses on cognitive challenges (Kümmerling-Meibauer and Meibauer) and the concept of markedness in picturebooks as an essential component in the fostering of children’s interpretative skills. Markedness, meaning certain properties of the picturebook, can be found on a verbal level, on a visual level and in the text-picture combinations and the concept is useful as a tool to understand the following chapters’ visual analyses. The second chapter focuses instead on the relation between picturebooks and literacy (Farrar, Arizpe and McAdam) and underlines the role of teachers in successful usage of picturebooks in order to capitalise on all aspects of the texts and engage with multiple literacies. The authors point out the plasticity and resourcefulness of picturebooks and the ways they can be used and approached, something that the following chapters underline through the manifold ways in which they include picturebooks in several school subjects.

2The second section of the volume, Challenging picturebooks in early childhood and primary education, covers topics such as gender and race as well as aesthetic literacy and the pleasures of reading. Two of the chapters focus on picturebooks as tools for teaching English as a foreign language. Both studies show that the use of images force the pupils to use their cognitive abilities and to co-create meaning from what they see. However, it seems that the choice of material and the amount of text included with the pictures play a significant role for the success of the implementation since language learners are in need of more scaffolding than native speakers asked to discuss or decipher a picture (Mourão). Two chapters in this section engage in separate ways with the abilities of students to read pictures and acquire visual literacy. One of them suggests that it would be helpful to formulate educational itineraries to develop children’s aesthetic literacy and outlines methodological ideas on how this could be materialised (Campagnaro). The other chapter presents a classroom study where the pupils read a contrapuntal picturebook where the words and the images tell two different stories, and the children need to fill in the gaps between the two levels (Ommundsen). The two chapters show the importance of learning and practicing decoding images, a skill that is crucial in today’s visually focused world and, as shown by the researchers, additionally leads to an increased capacity of critical thinking. The last chapter focuses on picturebooks as a way to introduce and discuss sensitive topics such as gender diversity (Madalena and Ramos). The authors note that the implicit introduction of sensitive topics that can be done through the imagery in picturebooks make this media suitable even in more conservative areas and can thus function as a sort of citizen education. Although picturebooks might most often be associated with this age group, the researchers in this section highlight ways in which they can become educational tools rather than just looked at for pleasure. They further show that visual literacy practice in this age group form a foundation for the later stages of education.

3The third section, Challenging Picturebooks in Secondary and Tertiary Education, brings together four chapters on topics such as the role of the school library, picturebooks in religious education and as tools for creative writing. The first chapter in the section begins with a quote from a teenage student, questioning if picturebooks really are for teenagers and not just children (Heggernes, p. 163). A valid question to ask in societies that value text over images and thus seem to reserve picture books for those who not yet master the ability to read. Nonetheless, as shown in this section of the volume, picturebooks, especially challenging ones, have much to offer teenage learners when it comes to both practical language skills and cognitive abilities. All four chapters in this section are based on interventions with students, ranging from interviews (Tveit) to action research projects (Sundmark and Olsson Jers) and thus in diverse ways report back on practical experiences of teenage readers of picturebooks. There seems to be an agreement that the use of this media allows for a greater inclusion of a diversity of learners where the students are allowed to draw on their own resources in their contributions to classroom work. The chapters furthermore conclude that the use of picturebooks lead to an exploration of visual and verbal competences as well as a development of the students’ aesthetic sensibilities and metacognitive faculties. The chapters likewise show that the picturebooks can be used for divergent educational goals. In one example, the picturebooks were used as starting points for exercises in creative writing (Sundmark and Olsson Jers) where the students had to organise pictures into a narrative that made sense, and then verbalise their stories. In another example the picturebooks were used to open a discussion about intercultural and historical experiences (Heggernes); in yet another chapter a picturebook based on the New Testament Gospels was used in classes of Religion and Ethics in Norway to stimulate critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration.

4The concluding section of the volume, Global Perspectives Pertaining to Challenging Picturebooks in Education, discusses how picturebooks can be used to confront tough questions and break down barriers in four different chapters. The section ends with a text on the publishing industry and its role in the shaping of the cultural landscape and the books available for young readers (Little). Two of the chapters discuss picturebooks that take their themes from tribal and Indigenous people both in style and content and how this provides an opportunity for conversations on values and different worldviews between generations, but also between groups of people. The inclusion of tribal art in the illustrations further offer new ways of seeing the world while simultaneously introducing novel aesthetical forms and a radically different visual language while passing on a heritage (Beckett). Whereas these picturebooks can be great introductions to get to know other cultures, they can also be seen as a way of ‘coming home’ for children from that particular group (Mackey), something they might not experience in other books. This is moreover an important aspect on picturebooks dealing with war, evacuation, and flight (Österlund), which can both be read as educational material on a distant past, social commentaries on present day events and as recognition for those who have experienced war recently and come to, in this case Finland, as immigrants.

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5The chapters of the volume utilise various theoretical and methodological approaches while exploring the concept of challenging picturebooks; compiled together, they form a rich contribution not only to the study of picturebooks but also to literacy studies in more general terms. Despite the disparate ways of tackling the topic, several themes such as intercultural competence, collaborative skills and critical thinking reoccur in the chapters, and most commonly the need to educate pupils, teachers and school-librarians in methods of reading and analysing visual media, abilities that are highly necessary in our modern, image rich world. As shown by the contributors in this volume, picturebooks can be a key component in this education, for young and old alike, and the chapters form a thorough foundation to build on in further studies and research. In addition to covering several age groups, the volume includes perspectives from various countries through the picturebooks studied and the researchers involved, although the focus on the northern European setting is dominant. Overall, the volume is an important contribution to the field, and recommended reading for educators and researchers alike.