ABSTRACT
USBBY’s Outstanding International Books for young people is an annual honor list of books published in the U.S. that originate in another country and often in a language other than English. The criteria assert that this corpus is comprised of the best of children´s literature from other countries with a distinct cultural flavor and are accessible to American readers. This critical content analysis focused on the phenomenon of the characters directly engaging and inviting readers through the character’s gaze. The research investigated to what and in what ways readers are invited and positioned by a character’s gaze, through the critical theory lens of Freire’s concept of codification, positioning theory from social psychology, spectatorship theory from film studies, and gaze theory from Foucault and Lacan. Three years (2015–2017) of USBBY picturebooks (59) were examined through a cross-analysis of the illustration styles and gaze to explore the positioning of the reader in respect to the opportunity for reader agency within the context of each narrative and its themes/topics.
