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This overview of picturebook studies published in English (2010-2020) includes fundamental findings for teaching and supporting readers as well as potential new research directions.
The prefix "multi" is often linked to words associated with picturebooks: "multicultural," "multilingual," "multimodal," and "multisensory," as well as "multiliteracies" and "multimedia." So it is not surprising that the maturing field of picturebook research has produced a multitude of studies from a variety of educational, literary, linguistic, psychological, cultural, and media perspectives and catering to a wide range of interests. However, it was not until recently that the extent of this growth has been recognized, as exemplified by the publication in 2018 of a 500-page handbook focused solely on picturebook studies, The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks (Kümmerling-Meibauer, 2018). This comprehensive edited collection includes essays on concepts (from page layout to ideology); picturebook categories; interfaces (such as picturebooks and comics); domains (such as art history, media, translation); and adaptations and remediation (such as film versions and merchandising). In explaining the expansion of this field, the editor, KümmerlingMeibauer (2018) notes that:
[T]he pleasures as well as the learning processes evoked by picturebooks have been addressed in book-length studies, edited volumes, and journal articles, whereby scholars from different disciplines have discovered the crucial role of the picturebook in the child's developing cognitive, linguistic, moral, and aesthetic capacities. (p. 4)
Over the last twenty years there has also been a greater recognition of the global production of picturebooks even though English-language publishers continue to dominate markets and only a few picturebooks in other languages are translated into English every year. From the academic side, it is now more common to find picturebook studies written by international scholars in Englishlanguage journals, as well as in academic journals from non-Anglophone countries. Although global knowledge exchange on picturebooks has been widened through international children's literature congresses and specialized picturebook conferences, there is still much more room to bring together education, literacy, literature, and publishing studies professionals, not to mention those from other disciplinary fields.
With so much academic activity around picturebooks, even by narrowing the scope to published research in English between 2010 and 2020 it is impossible to be comprehensive, so my aim is instead to provide a "state of the art" that includes some bearings...