5. Título: Analysing children’s narrative picture books
Lector: Clare Painter
Children’s narrative picture books are of interest both for their educational role in facilitating early literacy and as a sophisticated form of ‘bi-semiotic’ text, where visual and verbal material work together to create meaning. This one-day course will introduce participants to an analytical approach to such texts based on Painter, Martin and Unsworth (2013). In the first place some of the visual networks proposed there will be taught, using images from well-regarded English, Australian and American picture books. The focus here will be mainly on the interpersonal metafunction, developing and adapting the ‘visual grammar’ proposed by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) and explaining the visual systems of FOCALISATION, PATHOS, AMBIENCE and GRADUATION (FORCE). If time permits, aspects of the other metafunctions will be introduced. Then we will consider how to approach picture-books as bi-semiotic (or ‘bi-modal’) texts, exploring the interplay between visual and verbal choices in specific books. Here, the aim will be to demonstrate the rich and subtle effects achieved by the co-instantiation of complementary visual and verbal meaning systems by skilled picture-book authors.
References:
Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T (2006) Reading Visual Images. London, Routledge
Painter, C., Martin, J. R. and Unsworth, L. (2013) Reading Visual Narratives. London, Equinox
Suggested Pre-reading:
Painter, C. 2008 ‘The role of colour in children’s picture books: choices in AMBIENCE. In Unsworth, L. (Ed.) New Literacies and the English Curriculum: Multimodal Perspectives. London, Continuum: 89-111
Participant level: This course is open to students at any level, but some familiarity with Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) and/or basic SFL concepts (such as metafunctions and grammatical/discourse terminology) would be useful. Where possible, participants are encouraged to bring a laptop computer to the course on which material can be downloaded, so as to facilitate sharing of picture book material for group work.
Course Materials / Materiales del curso:
Download link (*.zip archive) / Vínculo de descarga (archivo *.zip)
References:
Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T (2006) Reading Visual Images. London, Routledge
Painter, C., Martin, J. R. and Unsworth, L. (2013) Reading Visual Narratives. London, Equinox
Suggested Pre-reading:
Painter, C. 2008 ‘The role of colour in children’s picture books: choices in AMBIENCE. In Unsworth, L. (Ed.) New Literacies and the English Curriculum: Multimodal Perspectives. London, Continuum: 89-111
Participant level: This course is open to students at any level, but some familiarity with Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) and/or basic SFL concepts (such as metafunctions and grammatical/discourse terminology) would be useful. Where possible, participants are encouraged to bring a laptop computer to the course on which material can be downloaded, so as to facilitate sharing of picture book material for group work.
Course Materials / Materiales del curso:
Download link (*.zip archive) / Vínculo de descarga (archivo *.zip)