Image&Word

Picture books represent a special subgenre of children’s literature that itself is a delineated genre within the general literary field. Picture books mostly display clearly defined figures and objects that typically feature in a child’s life: mothers, fathers, family members, cuddly toys, pets, fairy-tale characters, classrooms and everyday objects. However, recently picture books were published in Flanders that challenge these features, offering complex texts and images. They seem to pose questions and thus to disturb, rather than to facilitate the child’s reading process by means of explanation or comforting efforts. One can identify these features as postmodern qualities. The pictures often refer to works of art such as paintings, sculptures, films, photographs and graphic novels. Research on the postmodern picture book often fails to describe its specific visual narrativity because of the dominant social-semiotic and linguistic approaches.

Kris Nauwelaerts: ill. Prinses Anna (text by Ed Franck), due 2010 © De Eenhoorn