ABSTRACT
Picture books can and do often encourage children to take for granted views of reality that many adults find objectionable. Picture books, with their intended purpose of showing viewers what the world implied by the words looks like, and thus means, are particularly powerful milieus for these sorts of interactions. The attitude a picture book implies about whether children should act like the animals they naturally are or the civilised social beings adults want them to be is a key marker in identifying it either as a didactic book intended to teach children or as a pleasurable one intended to please them. In a picture book like Mr Gumpy, therefore, the text sensibly says nothing about the appearance of Mr Gumpy or his boat, and the pictures are incapable of actually moving as a boat or an animal does.
