- Åse Marie Ommundsen, Gunnar Haaland, and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
Exploring Challenging Picturebooks in Education
What should students read? The choice of texts in the classroom has important pedagogical implications for both novice and experienced readers. The new volume Exploring Challenging Picturebooks in Education highlights challenging picturebooks as a supplement or alternative to traditional teaching materials. The collection investigates cognitively and aesthetically challenging picturebooks combined with collective, student-active teaching methods at different levels and in different settings: kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, libraries and even within higher education.
Children and students live and learn in a multimodal environment that demands and advances visual and verbal literacies, and social competencies. Indeed, multimodal literacy is considered a prerequisite to becoming a competent reader today. Challenging picturebooks, defined in more detail below, introduce readers to complex relationships between words and images, invite for collaborative reading, and foster children’s communication abilities by stimulating discussions of the story as well as the images. When reading challenging picturebooks, students that are competent readers of pictures but less competent as listeners and readers of verbal text, are potentially encouraged to advance as readers. It seems, however, that the multiple affordances of contemporary picturebooks have not been acknowledged by many educators.
What is a “challenging picturebook”? Most people who deal with picturebooks may have an intuitive idea of what would count as a challenging picturebook. Whenever picturebooks appear on the market that deviate from established traditions and expectations, they may be rejected by parental and official gatekeepers. These picturebooks challenge their readers by confronting them with hitherto unknown or unsuspected topics, visual design, and storylines. Time and time again, picturebook researchers have pointed out that certain picturebooks are challenging for a certain target audience due to the advanced character of the book and the target readers’ still-developing understanding of aesthetic, linguistic, and literary codes. However, what exactly makes a picturebook challenging has hardly been explored in detail.
The notion “challenging picturebook” was internationally established as a prominent theme within picturebook studies by Janet Evans’ collection Challenging and Controversial Picturebooks: Creative and Critical Responses to Visual Texts (2015). Herein, Evans refers to picturebooks that can be described as “strange, unusual, controversial, disturbing, challenging, shocking, troubling, curious, demanding and philosophical” (5). Having expressed skepticism about a unique characterization, she contends that there is no single term for labeling these picturebooks and subsequently suggests a double label: challenging and controversial. Exploring Challenging Picturebooks in Education intends to go a step ahead by defining the notion of challenging picturebook in a more concise and reliable manner, and by discussing the use of such picturebooks in the classroom.
Several contributions in this volume discuss the definition or the understanding of the “challenging picturebook.” Two focal points can be observed: the properties and affordances of the book, and the engagement with the book by the reader. The first focal point implies an intuitive, common-sense approach and a prototype concept: what would (proto)typically characterize a challenging picturebook? The focus on the readers allows for precise definitions, but not of the book in itself, only of the book in relation to a certain audience. In this respect, the concept of the cognitively challenging picturebook comes to the fore as it considers the child’s cognitive, emotional, and aesthetic development. This idea points to the observation that challenging picturebooks address a wide range of thematic, cognitive, and aesthetic challenges, and educational affordances.
The contributors come from eight countries: Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. And they discuss challenging picturebooks from an even wider geographical spectrum including also Australia, Brazil, Denmark, India, Russia, South Africa, and the United States of America. Moreover, the contributors come from different disciplines, such as literary studies, linguistics, library and information studies, educational studies, art education, theology, and children’s publishing. The global range and the interdisciplinary undertakings are unique features that provide fresh and fruitful perspectives on language and literature learning.
The book has four main parts. In the two chapters of Part I, theoretical perspectives from cognitive studies (Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Jörg Meibauer) and literacy studies (Jennifer Farrar, Evelyn Arizpe, and Julie McAdam) inform the reading of challenging picturebooks and their uses in educational settings.
In Part II there is a gradual move from early childhood education to primary school, starting with the use of wordless picturebooks in pre-primary, early-English learning in Portugal (Sandie Mourão) and the development of aesthetic literacy in Italian early childhood and primary education (Marnie Campagnaro). The following two chapters bring us to Norway and address reading education (Åse Marie Ommundsen) and English language education (Janice Bland), before we return to Portugal and the topic of gender diversity in picturebooks (Emanuel Madalena and Ana Margarida Ramos).
In Part III, we return to and remain in Scandinavia. The first two chapters are both set in Norwegian lower secondary schools and address challenging picturebooks as a vehicle for empathy development, intercultural competence, and second language education (Sissil Lea Heggernes) and the uses of challenging picturebooks in the school library and the attitudes of librarians (Åse Kristine Tveit). As we move to Norwegian upper secondary school, the topic is learning across the disciplines of Norwegian Language and Literature and Religion and Ethics through a complex and unorthodox adaptation of gospel stories (Gunnar Haaland, Eivind Karlsson, Anne Kristine Øgreid, and Åse Marie Ommundsen). The final chapter of Part III brings us to Sweden and addresses creative writing in English in upper secondary school and teacher education (Björn Sundmark and Cecilia Ohlson Jers).
Finally, Part IV presents global perspectives in different senses of the word, first in its most obvious sense as we encounter picturebooks inspired by indigenous cultures in India, Southern Africa, and Australia (Sandra Beckett). In the second chapter, the topic – refugees of war – is universal but the setting is the flight of children from Finland to Sweden during World War II (Mia Österlund). Next, we return to indigenous people, this time in Canada, and the novel phenomenon of the picturebook app (Margaret Mackey). The book ends in the United Kingdom at what is actually an important point of departure: the publication of challenging picturebooks (Laura Little).
Exploring Challenging Picturebooks in Education sheds new light on the multiple dimensions relevant to investigating the impact of picturebooks on learning processes and the development of multimodal literacy competencies. It thus makes a significant contribution to the growing area of picturebook research and will be key reading for educators, researchers, and post-graduate students in the field of literacy studies, children’s literature, and education research.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Åse Marie Ommundsen is Professor of Norwegian literature in the Faculty of Education and International Studies at Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet), and an Adjunct Professor at Nord University, Norway. She holds a doctorate in Scandinavian literature from the University of Oslo. Her interest in challenging picturebooks and picturebooks for adults has fostered publications in Norwegian, Danish, English, French, and Dutch as well as guest lectures and keynotes. She is the editor of Looking Out and Looking In: National Identity in Picturebooks of the New Millennium (Novus 2013) and coeditor of two books in Norwegian. In 2013, she was awarded the Kari Skjønsberg Award for her research on children’s literature. She chairs the research group Challenging Picturebooks in Education at OsloMet.
ORCID: 0000-0001-5109-9766
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gunnar Haaland is Associate Professor of Religion and Ethics in the Faculty of Education and International Studies at Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet). He holds a doctorate in New Testament Studies from MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society in Oslo. He has taught biblical studies, religious studies, and ethics for years and contributed as a translator to the 2011 Bible translation of the Norwegian Bible Society. In 2010–2011, he was Barbro Osher Research Fellow in Memory of Krister Stendahl at the Swedish Theological Institute in Jerusalem. His research interests and academic publications embrace Judaism, Jewish–Christian relations, and receptions of the Bible in children’s bibles and picturebooks. He co-chairs the research group Challenging Picturebooks in Education at OsloMet.
ORCID: 0000-0001-5373-5471
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer is Professor in the German Department at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen. She has been a guest professor at the University of Växjö/Kalmar, Sweden, and the University of Vienna. She is the author of four monographs on different subjects of children’s literature and has (co)edited 20 volumes, among them The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks (2018). Her book Children’s Literature and the Avant-Garde (edited with Elina Druker, John Benjamins, 2015) won the Children’s Literature Association award as well as the award of IRSCL for the best scholarly collection of 2015. She is co-editor of two book series, “Children’s Literature, Culture and Cognition” (John Benjamins) and “Studies on European Children’s and Young Adult Literature” (Winterverlag).
ORCID: 0000-0003-0068-5575