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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
Affiliation Notes
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This work is affiliated with the AustLit subset Asian-Australian Children's Literature and Publishing because it has a Chinese translation.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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y
Playing with Picturebooks : Postmodernism and the Postmodernesque
Houndmills
:
Palgrave Macmillan
,
2012
Z1909588
2012
single work
criticism
"Postmodernism has played a significant part in the development of playful and experimental picturebooks for children over the past 50 years. Playing with Picturebooks offers fresh insights into the continuing influence of postmodernism on picturebooks for children, covering a wide range of international picturebooks predominantly from the 1980s to the present. It represents a significant contribution to current debates centred on the decline of the effects of postmodernism on fiction and detects a shift from the postmodern to the postmodernesque. Playing with Picturebooks draws on a wide range of critical perspectives in examining postmodern approaches to narrative and illustration. Chapters discuss how metafictive devices enable different modes of representation, offer different perspectives to authorised version of history, and promote difference and ex-centricity over unity. Playing with Picturebooks is essential reading, not only for academics in the field of children's literature, but also for researchers, teachers and students." (Back cover)
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Local and Global : Cultural Globalization, Consumerism and Children's Fiction
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Contemporary Children's Literature and Film 2011; (p. 57-78) -
y
Playing With Picturebooks : Postmodernism and the Postmodernesque
Kelvin Grove
:
2010
Z1761205
2010
single work
thesis
The thesis traces the influence of postmodernism on picturebooks. Through a review of current scholarship on both postmodernism and postmodern literature it examines the multiple ways in which picturebooks have responded to the influence of postmodernism. The thesis is predominantly located in the field of Cultural and Literary Studies, which informs the ways in which children's literature is positioned within contemporary culture and how it responds to the influences which shape its production and reception. Cultural and Literary Studies also offers a useful theoretical frame for analysing issues of textuality, ideology, and originality, as well as social and political comment in the focus texts.
The thesis makes a significant contribution to the development of an understanding of the place of the postmodern picturebook within the cultural context of postmodernism. It adds to the field of children's literature research through an awareness of the (continuing) evolution of the postmodern picturebook particularly as the current scholarship on the postmodernism picturebook does not engage with the changing form and significance of the postmodern picturebook to the same extent as this thesis.
The study is significant from a methodological perspective as it draws on a wide range of theoretical perspectives across literary studies, visual semiotics, philosophy, cultural studies, and history to develop a tripartite methodological framework that utilises the methods of postclassical narratology, semiotics, and metafictive strategies to carry out the textual analysis of the focus texts.
Children's texts have a tradition of being both resistant and compliant. Its resistance has made a space for the development of the postmodern picturebook; its compliance is evident in its tendency to take a route around a truly radical or iconoclastic position. The thesis posits that children's postmodern picturebooks adopt what suits their form and purposes by drawing from and reflecting on some influences of postmodernism while disregarding those that seem irrelevant to its direction. Furthermore, the thesis identifies a shift in the focus of a number of postmodern picturebooks produced since the turn of the twenty-first century. This trend has seen a shift from texts which interrogate discourses of liberal humanism to those that engage with aspects of postmodernity. These texts, postmodernesque picturebooks, offer contradictory perspectives on aspects of society emanating from the rise in global trends mentioned above.
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Know the Author/Illustrator: An Enigma Wrapped in a Riddle, Tohby Riddle
2009
single work
column
— Appears in: Magpies: Talking About Books for Children , September vol. 24 no. 4 2009; (p. 8-11) Tohby Riddle says his early career as a cartoonist at The Good Weekend was instrumental in developing his 'a habit for looking for ideas and generating them through different ways of thinking' (8). An 'art school graduate with an interest in architecture' city-scapes, buildings, and alleys form a common link in his work, a fascination Riddle says, 'began from the age of twelve or thirteen, when we moved closer to the city from a fairly bushy area north of Sydney Harbour' (9). Roy points out that Riddle's work conveys 'a certain lightness and joy' that makes his urban landscapes 'light and myterious' rather than'dark and unnerving' which Riddle arrtibutes to his love of cities eventually developing into an interest in 'the archetypal metropolis' (9-10). Riddle says, "I want my cities to appear as places where so many things are going on at once rather than some type of dystopian nightmare...reality is ambiguous and random and chaotic, and if you can just get a nice authentic slice of that into a book, then it bears repreated readings, repeated discussions about the possibilities of the meanings...' (10). -
Metafiction and Humour in 'The Great Escape from City Zoo'
2000
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Papers : Explorations into Children's Literature , August vol. 10 no. 2 2000; (p. 5-11) McMillan points out how the use of metafiction in postmodern picture books adds to the 'range of play' already available within picture book compositions and functions to 'generate reader movement between the internal and external positions constructed by the text' (5). She articulates the connection between metafiction and humour, pointing to how play-oriented activities are seen as central to a child's acquisition of language and the development of complex cognitive social skills. Drawing from John Stephens who argues that the use of intertextuality in children's texts is fundamentally problematic, McMillan discusses how metafiction and humour both work to 'foreground the gap between signs and their referents' by relying on 'an audience knowledge of intertexts', and the recognition and implications of specific signifiers (5), with a close reading of Tohby Riddle's The Great Escape from City Zoo. The reading looks at how the text 'uses satire to comment on ways of viewing the world' (7) and how the reader is positioned to question the ways in which language structures reality (10). McMillan concludes that 'while the text encodes the possibility of escaping the net of resonsibility', there is an overriding moral sense that 'victory lies in the fun of the adventure and by extension, in the enjoyment and mastery of the fictional game' (10).
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Untitled
1997
single work
review
— Appears in: Reading Time : The Journal of the Children's Book Council of Australia , August vol. 41 no. 3 1997; (p. 19)
— Review of The Great Escape from City Zoo 1997 single work picture book -
Anxious Freedoms
1997
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , August no. 193 1997; (p. 62-63)
— Review of The Two Bullies Isao Morimoto (translator), 1997 single work picture book ; The Great Escape from City Zoo 1997 single work picture book ; Henry's Bed 1997 single work picture book ; Henry's Bath 1997 single work picture book -
'The Great Escape from City Zoo' by Toby Riddle
1997
single work
review
— Appears in: Viewpoint : On Books for Young Adults , Spring vol. 5 no. 3 1997; (p. 26)
— Review of The Great Escape from City Zoo 1997 single work picture book -
The Children's Book Council of Australia Annual Awards 1998
1998
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Reading Time : The Journal of the Children's Book Council of Australia , August vol. 42 no. 3 1998; (p. 3-13) Judge's report of the winners and shortlisted books in this year's CBCA awards. -
Background to... The Great Escape from City Zoo
1997
single work
column
— Appears in: Magpies : Talking About Books for Children , July vol. 12 no. 3 1997; (p. 22-23) -
Know the Author/Illustrator: An Enigma Wrapped in a Riddle, Tohby Riddle
2009
single work
column
— Appears in: Magpies: Talking About Books for Children , September vol. 24 no. 4 2009; (p. 8-11) Tohby Riddle says his early career as a cartoonist at The Good Weekend was instrumental in developing his 'a habit for looking for ideas and generating them through different ways of thinking' (8). An 'art school graduate with an interest in architecture' city-scapes, buildings, and alleys form a common link in his work, a fascination Riddle says, 'began from the age of twelve or thirteen, when we moved closer to the city from a fairly bushy area north of Sydney Harbour' (9). Roy points out that Riddle's work conveys 'a certain lightness and joy' that makes his urban landscapes 'light and myterious' rather than'dark and unnerving' which Riddle arrtibutes to his love of cities eventually developing into an interest in 'the archetypal metropolis' (9-10). Riddle says, "I want my cities to appear as places where so many things are going on at once rather than some type of dystopian nightmare...reality is ambiguous and random and chaotic, and if you can just get a nice authentic slice of that into a book, then it bears repreated readings, repeated discussions about the possibilities of the meanings...' (10). -
y
Playing With Picturebooks : Postmodernism and the Postmodernesque
Kelvin Grove
:
2010
Z1761205
2010
single work
thesis
The thesis traces the influence of postmodernism on picturebooks. Through a review of current scholarship on both postmodernism and postmodern literature it examines the multiple ways in which picturebooks have responded to the influence of postmodernism. The thesis is predominantly located in the field of Cultural and Literary Studies, which informs the ways in which children's literature is positioned within contemporary culture and how it responds to the influences which shape its production and reception. Cultural and Literary Studies also offers a useful theoretical frame for analysing issues of textuality, ideology, and originality, as well as social and political comment in the focus texts.
The thesis makes a significant contribution to the development of an understanding of the place of the postmodern picturebook within the cultural context of postmodernism. It adds to the field of children's literature research through an awareness of the (continuing) evolution of the postmodern picturebook particularly as the current scholarship on the postmodernism picturebook does not engage with the changing form and significance of the postmodern picturebook to the same extent as this thesis.
The study is significant from a methodological perspective as it draws on a wide range of theoretical perspectives across literary studies, visual semiotics, philosophy, cultural studies, and history to develop a tripartite methodological framework that utilises the methods of postclassical narratology, semiotics, and metafictive strategies to carry out the textual analysis of the focus texts.
Children's texts have a tradition of being both resistant and compliant. Its resistance has made a space for the development of the postmodern picturebook; its compliance is evident in its tendency to take a route around a truly radical or iconoclastic position. The thesis posits that children's postmodern picturebooks adopt what suits their form and purposes by drawing from and reflecting on some influences of postmodernism while disregarding those that seem irrelevant to its direction. Furthermore, the thesis identifies a shift in the focus of a number of postmodern picturebooks produced since the turn of the twenty-first century. This trend has seen a shift from texts which interrogate discourses of liberal humanism to those that engage with aspects of postmodernity. These texts, postmodernesque picturebooks, offer contradictory perspectives on aspects of society emanating from the rise in global trends mentioned above.
-
Local and Global : Cultural Globalization, Consumerism and Children's Fiction
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Contemporary Children's Literature and Film 2011; (p. 57-78)
