Image

Depending on the speaker (children’s author, literary critic, art historian, advertising designer, painter) and the venue (bookstore, literature conference, gallery, marketing meeting), the term “image” implies an array of connotations, purposes, and audiences (Mitchell 1986). In the hybrid contexts of the twenty-first century—where visual culture, visual studies, and visual literacy are related but contested terms—“image” crosses disciplinary boundaries and characterizes multimodal activities in classrooms and communication. For children’s literature, an interdisciplinary field drawing upon many scholarly discourses, pedagogical approaches, and modes of creative expression, “image” is a complex and provisional term, always at play and in flux.