Tracing fantasy and reality in children's picture books: Material, spatial and sensory encounters

Abstract

Children's picture books are widely recognized for their multifaceted contribution to children's development: They support their visual and linguistic literacy, their reading ability and their social imagination. According to scholars, children’s picturebooks are also aesthetic objects that serve an expressive function for the consumer and deserve to be cherished for their ornate architecture. Admittedly, many graphic designers and publishers are experimenting with the shape and form of children's picturebooks. This results in the publication of books with interesting shapes, different sizes, striking fabrics, strange qualities of paper and unusual textures, imbued with aesthetic and literary charm that attract buyers and function as a gateway to the world through physical engagement. The use of particular techniques and materials, in addition to adding depth and meaning to the narratives of picturebooks and challenging the traditional reading process, often affects the way readers perceive the overt or covert messages of verbal and visual tropes; Materiality enhances readers’ imagination and enables them to “read” behind the words and pictures, supporting the overt and covert meanings of the text and illustrations. This article focuses on five picturebooks for children with extraordinary material/structural aspect that deserves to be studied as a separate system and medium of reading alongside words and images. Drawing on Michael Staiger’s model of analysis that identifies six dimensions for analyzing children's picturebooks, the synergy of the verbal, visual and tactile tropes of the selected books will be examined. An effort will be made to determine whether the boundaries of physical and narrative space are blurred, as well as whether readers are facilitated in discerning the boundaries of the “truth” of each fictional universe they are asked to discover, using all their senses.

Keywords:  picturebook format, materiality, fictionality, reality