Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.31820/f.31.2.2
Pika Vončina’s Narrative Picture Books
Maja Verdonik
orcid.org/0000-0002-2677-5205
; Učiteljski fakultet Sveučilišta u Rijeci
Melita Mlikota
; Dječji vrtić „Radost” Crikvenica
Abstract
This paper presents a selection of narrative picture books
by the Croatian illustrator Pika Vončina, who appears in the role of both the
author of the text and its illustrator. Picture books belong to the genre of
children’s animalistic literature and our interpretation is based on
contemporary research into narrative picture books as pieces of art within
children’s literature, in which the same narrative is told through an interplay
between the verbal and visual discourse. We apply Smiljana Narančić Kovač’s
approach to interpretation as well as the approaches of other authors. The picture
books are analysed with regards to the narrative levels and the narrators’
roles in both discourses. The results of the analysis indicate that Pika
Vončina’s picture books often comprise intradiegetic narrative levels on which
heterodiegetic or homodiegetic narrators produce embedded hypodiegetic
narratives. Some picture books contain multiple narrative sequences, which in
some instances extend to several picture books. Along with the permeation of
verbal and visual discourse, some picture books also display some of the
postmodernist characteristics of children’s literature as interpreted by
Stjepan Hranjec, such as language games, playfulness with the form, irony, and
narration outside of and beyond the author. Given the sometimes deprecating
attitude towards picture books in general, Pika Vončina’s opus of narrative
picture books is an important contribution to the artistic production of
contemporary Croatian picture books within Croatian children’s literature.
Keywords
Pika Vončina; picture book; children’s literature; postmodernism; narrative; animalistic children’s literature
Hrčak ID:
230850
URI
Publication date:
24.12.2019.
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