Memory and history of picture books: dialogical relations between text and images

Abstract

Immersed in a society dominated by images, in recent years, picture books have proliferated with themes long considered taboo, such as wars, conflict and death,. The objective of this study is to analyze how these issues are currently presented to children, youth  and adult readers. The study looks at the picture books: Fumo [Smoke] (2008), by Antón Fortes and Joanna Concejo; and O Princípio [The beginning] (2012), by Paula Carballeira and Sonja Danowski. We believe that these are important works because of the perspectives they adopt to the themes addressed, and because they require an active visual reading. Readers must be able to interpret the messages and multiple connections established between text and image, and the dialogical relations that provide different levels of reading. A comparative perspective is adopted, which analyzes how knowledge of the past is constructed and communicated, with elements that contribute to a critical view of the topic addressed. The main authorial strategies that characterize visual and textual reading are discussed. These readings are based primarily on polysemy, external referentiality, poetic function,  alterity and a semantic framework that focuses and delimits the field of reflection and interior reading. For all these reasons, in both books, words and images contribute to a (re)creation of collective memory through particular experiences and testimonies that denounce atrocities that marked the devir of recent history, and whose existence must be made known to children and youth to promote a culture of peace.