Understanding literature for children and young people, and its history, is as much about analysing images as it is about reading text. Wordless baby books, picture books for reading aloud, illustrated early readers, comics and graphic novels: these formats all combine words and pictures to make meaning. Participants in this course will explore the ways in which visual texts for children and young people operate. By the end of the semester, participants will be familiar with a range of graphic narratives and their salient features, will be able to offer close readings of visual texts, and will feel confident applying a variety of critical and theoretical approaches from picture book theory to comics theory. We will consider how words and images correspond, complement and contradict each other; and will examine together the sometimes controversial readings and misreadings made of graphic children’s literature. Primary texts will include picture books by Margaret Wise Brown and Maurice Sendak, illustrated early readers such as Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad Are Friends (1970) and two graphic novels: Marjane Satrapi’s The Complete Persepolis (2007) - including Volume 1: The Story of a Childhood and Volume 2: The Story of a Return - and Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper Volume 1 (2019). Excerpts from the Satrapi and Oseman will be made available for in-class discussion, but students are encouraged -- but not required -- to read the full texts in advance.

Kurs im HIS-LSF