The Complex Relationship of Words and Images in Picturebooks

Children's literature scholars, specifically picturebook theorist and researchers, need to better understand the complicated nature of the separation and coming together of textual matter (words) and visual matter (images) and the range of relations between these entities. Various scholars have conceptualized the relations between word and image in vastly different ways, advocated for a range of analytical frameworks to understand these relations, and subsequently have provided a theoretical foundation for exploring the roles and functions of words and images in narrative picturebooks. More attention focusing on how picturebooks are instantiated as meaningful multimodal ensembles across technological, sensory, material, semiotic, modal, mediational, as well as ideological dimensions is necessary if we are to fully understand the ways words and image work in picturebooks and the educational potential of available and future multimodal ensembles.