Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to propose some ways of reading two wordless picture storybooks which have recently been published, by Suzy Lee and Bernardo Carvalho respectively. The objective is to analyse the ways in which the visual discourse can create an effective narrative using a variety of pictorial strategies. These works were not idly chosen, however. Both are concerned with ecoliteracy, having narratives that tell a story about a specific relationship between humans and the sea. Depicting maritime scenarios, the two picture books promote a special and symbolic approach to the natural environment. The narratives help to configure the environment as more than merely an undifferentiated space inhabited by living beings, this being the most elementary concept of “environment”; rather, it is seen as an ecological arena involving the interaction between the landscape and the living beings it harbours. As such, the books assume the role of promoting not only habits of proto-literacy, but of ecoliteracy too.
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Notes
On the “poetics of shape” and the creative challenges it poses, see Mariella Muheim (1979). Van der Linden (2003) has looked at the implications of picture book shapes and dimensions for the reader. Suzy Lee seems well aware of these, using the book’s shape and double-spread page division in a similar way in Mirror (2009), another wordless picture story book.
Following Drouin and Astolfi’s (1986) perspective.
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Paulo Pereira and Margaret Gomes for the translation and revision of the text, and the Portuguese editors of Onda and Um dia na praia for permission to use illustrations from these books. They are also very grateful to the CLE editors for their help and support in producing this final version of the paper.
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Ana Margarida Ramos (PhD) is a Professor of Literature and Children’s Literature at Aveiro University, Portugal. She is also a member of the Research Centre for Child Studies (University of Minho) and involved in several other research projects in children’s literature studies and reading promotion.
Rui Ramos (PhD) is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Minho (Institute of Education), Portugal and member of the Research Centre for Child Studies. His research centres on Discourse Analysis and he has given special attention to the study of environmental discourse.
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Ramos, A.M., Ramos, R. Ecoliteracy Through Imagery: A Close Reading of Two Wordless Picture Books. Child Lit Educ 42, 325–339 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-011-9142-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-011-9142-3