The Materiality of the Book

Abstract

This chapter links with the previous chapter by further exploring the chidren’s relationships with reading. Specifically, it considers materiality, a key aspect in my argument about their engagements with reading. It looks at how the children relate to the artefact of the book, rather than reading in general as a concept or practice. Four issues are essentially linked to the materiality of reading in this chapter: the physical nature of books; the physicality of reading, speaking and reading; the content of books; and the materiality of illustrations, that is, colours on the page and how the page is used by the participants, authors and illustrators. Readers touch pages, flick between them and physically engage with characters — for example by stroking pictures on the page. Authors and illustrators create and position text and create qualities of colour and tone for the child characters, places, scenes and objects on the pages of the book. As part of this, racialised characters are embodied in books and participants make meaning of them. The data presented in this chapter enable us to see the ways in which children construct their identities through what they find in the pages of picture books. The first section considers the materiality of the book and how this is used by children. We see that books as objects and the activity of reading can be used as a way of resisting adults’ requests.