Beauty and creativity in the new nonfiction picturebook

Abstract

Since the turn of this century, nonfiction books for children have undergone a ‘pictorial turn’ (Merveldt 2018). The proportion and importance of the visual code has progressively increased, and its role has changed not only in quantitative and qualitative terms, but also epistemologically, as images and other formal aspects of the books have become meaningful in themselves, the core of the knowledge the authors want to communicate. Many nonfiction books published internationally over the last two decades revolve around a visual idea, they are created by authors who are also, often, illustrators and use images (their composition in the spread, their relationship, their friction with the text) to convey information, insights, clues, reflections, questions – as opposed to answers (Sanders 2018) – about reality. These new books involve readers on both a cognitive and an aesthetic level and encourage inferences, connections, intuitions, promoting an active, co-constructed knowledge, open to multiple interpretations (Grilli 2021). The article refers to the critical literature on children’s nonfiction produced in recent years, and analyses the visual (or verbo-visual) strategies used in some new nonfiction picturebooks published internationally, to show how authors/illustrators invite readers to take part in the knowing process.