More Words About Pictures: Current Research on Picture Books and Visual/Verbal Texts for Young People

This volume represents the current state of research on picture books and other adjacent hybrid forms of visual/verbal texts such as comics, graphic novels, and book apps, with a particular focus on texts produced for and about young people. When Perry Nodelman’s Words about Pictures: the Narrative Art of Children’s Picture Books was published almost three decades ago, it was greeted as an important contribution to studies in children’s picture books and illustration internationally; and based substantially on it, Nodelman has recently been named the 2015 recipient of the International Grimm Award for children’s literature criticism. In the years since Words About Pictures appeared, scholars have built on Nodelman’s groundbreaking text and have developed a range of other approaches, both to picture books and to newer forms of visual/verbal texts that have entered the marketplace and become popular with young people. The essays in this book offer 'more words' about established and emerging forms of picture books, providing an overview of the current state of studies in visual/verbal texts and gathering in one place the work being produced at various locations and across disciplines. Essays exploring areas such as semiological and structural aspects of conventional picture books, graphic narratives and new media forms, and the material and performative cultures of picture books represent current work not only from literary studies but also media studies, art history, ecology, Middle Eastern Studies, library and information studies, and educational research. In addition to work by international scholars including William Moebius, Erica Hateley, Nathalie op de Beeck, and Nina Christensen that carries on and challenges the conclusions of Words about Pictures, the collection also includes a wide-ranging reflection by Perry Nodelman on continuities and changes in the current interdisciplinary field of study of visual/verbal texts for young readers. Providing a look back over the history of picture books and the development of picture book scholarship, More Words About Pictures also offers an overview of our current understanding of these intriguing texts.

Perry Nodelman is Professor Emeritus at the University of Winnipeg, Canada. He is a past President of the Children’s Literature Association and has been Editor of both the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly and Canadian Children’s Literature.

Naomi Hamer is Assistant Professor at the University of Winnipeg, Canada, an executive board member of the Association for Research in Cultures of Young People, and an editor for Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures.

Mavis Reimer is Dean of Graduate Studies and Professor of English at the University of Winnipeg, Canada. She was Canada Research Chair in Young People's Texts and Cultures between 2005 and 2015 and is the founding editor of Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures.