Description

In this essay, we will explore how picture books communicate ideas, characters, narratives, and themes using merging text and pictures. Along with analysing, different picture books like postmodern picture books, Indigenous literature, and historical realism and the how they explicitly designed to use conventions and components that draw on 'literacy', 'semiotic', and language theories to support the ideas conducted. (McDonald, 2018)

Originally, picture books portrayed an adult's viewpoints of adolescence, acquiring to teach, nurture and socialise children nowadays. Multiple picture books have been designed through different conventions to discuss particular 'social situations'. 

Every postmodern storey remains a comparatively modern technique that came after World War II. Following this event, it has had a significant influence on children's books at present. To describe what a postmodern picture book means it is when a legendary tale or plot is interrupted to impersonate an alternative purpose or result. “The purpose of literature study is to promote a “critical analysis of the status quo that can open students to new perspectives, prepare [them] for current and coming challenges to traditional ways of being, and perhaps even stimulate them to launch their own challenges to the old order” (O’Neil, 2010, p. 41). The author aims that the reader's first perspective of a particular view is left for them to question and to interpret the meaning of the book. (O'Neil, 2010). Children are left to discover their meanings by in-depth or structural interpretation of these books.

Postmodern picture books are stories commonly perceived, but also, contain methods that are given to be transformed by the reader from their past knowledge. (McDonald.2018.p.29) Typically, people contain the basic plot structure. Though, formation that is developed slightly through the use of postmodernism conventions. Indeterminacy is seen in or interpreted in a book whereby the information is intentionally vague and delivers no obvious indication of what is happening. It makes multiple connotations for the student and permits them to have various ways of imagining around the narrative, which can deviate extensively from reader to reader. Within the excess of the convention, the books display colourful images and dynamic designs to reveal to the readers, what they projected about the book, is far from anything they initially thought. The book's physical space can be shaped or influenced further than typical beliefs and include small or big font. The graphic text may need the reader to turn the page to follow the text, with usually drawing attention to the invisible parts of the peri text- the endpapers, the title page, or the foreword. (McDonald, 2018.p.29). These kinds of ‘performance conventions’ inspire the reader to become aware of what is happening in the book. For example, 'The Boring Book' (Unka, 2013) and Rules of Summer (Tan, 2013) are prime models of texts that incorporate these elements.

Rules of Summer (Tan, 2013), is a book that profoundly relies on the dark, mysterious, and exotic and gloomy pictures, which further limits its text to tell the story. In contrast to The Boring Book, it displays bright and considerably engaging pictures, Presenting text as its character, and moves outside of the standard narrative and creates a story of its own when the reader must turn the pages to follow the narration of the text. More than often, postmodern books carry forbidden messages to navigate these sensitive subjects. Writers tend to incorporate conventions that are light-hearted to address these issues. The book Rules of Summer (Tan, 2013) is an example that highlights the formal and informal rules of life. The informal rules are the ones that are often the hardest to learn, as demonstrated by the character in the book. Whereby, The Boring Book (Unka, 2013) can be seen as a challenge to the rules of a written text because the book allows its text to step out of a narrow structure and reconstruct a narrative of its own. A comparison of the books; both offer children an opportunity to engage with the texts on many levels. It enables them to build connections into a knowledge of these distinct texts and the world around them.