VERBALNO-VIZUALNI DISKURSI PROBLEMSKIH SLIKOVNICA O EMOCIJAMA

Abstract

A picturebook is a multimodal work of art that a child encounters already in early childhood. The paper analyzes the problem picturebooks by the authors Tatjana Gjurković, Tea Knežević, and Jelena Brezovec, which thematize children’s challenges of dealing with emotions such as disappointment, guilt, shame, and humiliation. The aim is to determine which characteristics of this type of picturebook’s verbal and visual discourses help children overcome problems arising from the mentioned emotions. Narrative parts of picturebooks were analyzed concerning the narrative perspectives and the narrators’ roles in the verbal and visual discourses according to the narrative level and extent of participation in the story. The results of the analysis show that, in the verbal and visual discourses of the analyzed picturebooks, the stories are mediated by extradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrators, with zero focalization of narration applied. The naive illustration style prevails in the visual discourse of picturebooks, along with elements of comic style and the use of complementary colors on certain double spreads.