Challenging and Controversial Picturebooks by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317631583
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

At the beginning of this study, the children tended to avoid ambiguous and controversial picturebooks. They chose picturebooks characterized by explicit, denotative visual language because these books provided them with referentiality and thus reassurance. Nevertheless, as argued earlier, aesthetic investigation should be crucial in children’s experience to disrupt and challenge their customary visual expectations. The data analysis, in fact, pointed out a remarkable change in the preferences expressed by children as the research progressed.

In the second survey, the percentage of children who said they preferred the fairy tales characterized by a connotative visual language rose to 45.9 per cent, while the percentage of children who said they preferred the fairy tales written with a denotative language fell to 54.1 per cent. The increase was particularly significant, as it reached + 29.8 per cent. But the highest peak was reached during the third survey, at the end of the observational research (+ 46 per cent), after the children had borrowed the books shared at school and taken them home.

The opportunity to take home, share and read again the most interesting books changed the initial situation. The children’s new aesthetic attentiveness resulting from their ability to become familiar with challenging visual texts and to share interpretive processes led many of these children (62.1 per cent) to move their preferences towards picturebooks marked by a connotative visual language: John’s journal reflected this change:

I really enjoyed this experience because I found out that book illustrators have their own way of illustrating books, that there are different versions which come from the same story. For example Little Red Riding Hood, or I found out that books can be in black and white and loads of other things...!

John (aged 8)

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