Reviewed by: Exploring Challenging Picturebooks in Education. International Perspectives on Language and Literature Learning ed. by Åse Marie Ommundsen, Gunnar Haaland, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer Lauren Rizzuto EXPLORING CHALLENGING PICTUREBOOKS IN EDUCATION. International Perspectives on Language and Literature Learning. Edited by Åse Marie Ommundsen, Gunnar Haaland, and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer. Routledge, 2022, 343 pages. ISBN: 978-0-367-85625-0 What do we—scholars, teachers, readers— really mean when we say that a picturebook is “challenging”? And what roles might the challenging picturebook play in twenty-first-century existence, a time of accelerating globalization and evolving dependency on visual forms of communication? These questions animate this valuable edited volume of critical essays on the uses of unconventional, at times controversial, picturebooks in early, primary, secondary, and tertiary education. Part I, “Theoretical Perspectives on Challenging Picturebooks in Education,” begins by helpfully deconstructing the descriptor challenging. From a cognitive development perspective, what makes picturebook challenging is not necessarily any controversial content (for what one person decides is controversial, another will consider a fact of life) but rather the reader’s intellectual recognition of a marked structure in the picturebook. That is, the child readers will recognize that there is something markedly [End Page 74] different going on in the text—a challenge— from what they have encountered before (Kümmerling-Meibauer and Meibauer; all citations refer to the corresponding chapter in the book). Further, because literacy is a social and culturally situated practice, the picturebook is best understood as a “whole package” that can bridge the perceived research/practice divide (Farrar et al.). Drawing upon major theorists such as Maria Nikolajeva, Carole Scott, and Perry Nodelman, among others, the authors argue that discussions about form and illustrative conventions can complement and expand students’ understandings of empathy, the Self, and the Other, but they also warn that teachers should be prepared for uncomfortable conversations when they select picturebooks for classroom use. The five articles in Part II, “Challenging Picturebooks in Early Childhood and Primary Education,” are practice-oriented. Subjects include the uses of the wordless picture-book in low-exposure foreign-language contexts (Mourão); improved aesthetic literacy in preprimary students (Campagnaro); the contrapuntal picturebook’s capacity to stoke eight-year-olds’ curiosity and critical thinking skills (Ommundsen); and complementing coursebooks with picturebooks in English-language learning through active, creative learning experience (Bland). The final contribution of this section finds that bringing trans-affirmative picturebooks like Joana Estrela’s Os vestidos do Tiago (2015) into conservative classrooms of six-to nine-year-olds can result in refreshing conversations about gender identity and acceptance (Madalena and Ramos). Part III details practitioners’ experiences in secondary and tertiary education in Scandinavia. One contribution concerns itself with secondary school libraries in Norway, which ironically, despite the national curriculum’s emphasis on multimodal forms of communication, do not necessarily prioritize visual literacy in their collections, let alone picture-books (Tveit). The other three articles of Part III confirm the picturebook’s potential to assist intellectual and emotional development. Peter Sís’s memoir, The Wall: Growing Up behind the Iron Curtain (2007), moves a group of initially reluctant, then mostly enthusiastic ESL students in Norway to acquire knowledge of Czechoslovakian history (Heggernes). Biblical stories, retold through comedic picturebook illustration, challenge students to leave “right” interpretations at the door and instead practice free associations and collaborative learning (Haaland et al.). Picturebooks offer unique creative writing oppor tuni-ties for upper-secondary and tertiary students in Sweden, who first unscramble pictures from published texts to (re) create coherent narratives and then give the narrative linguistic form (Sundmark and Jers). Each contribution of this section emphatically disproves the misconception that picturebooks are exclusively for young readers. The final section of the volume, Part IV, dedicates itself to “Global Perspectives.” The works discussed range from texts about Finnish child evacuees during World War II (Österlund) to picturebooks from tribal cultures like the Warli in India and the Australian Aboriginal peoples (Beckett). All invite readers to imagine different ways of being in the world. Looking toward the future, readers may also find new challenges in sophisticated apps, like the one that accompanies the picturebook Pīsim Finds Her Miskanow (2013), which calls...
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Nov 10, 2024
Dragoș M Obreja 
Just Published
Open Access