ABSTRACT
It is widely acknowledged that picturebooks play an important role in the international book market. Many picturebooks are replete with intertextual and interpictorial references to other works of art and incorporate visual codes that are typical of related multimedia art forms, such as artists' books, comics, and movies. A number of disciplines deal with picturebooks: children's literature research, literary didactics, art history, media studies, linguistics, education, developmental psychology, and picture theory, to name just a few. The pleasures as well as the learning processes evoked by picturebooks have been addressed in book-length studies, edited volumes, and journal articles, whereby scholars from different disciplines have discovered the crucial role of the picturebook in the child's developing cognitive, linguistic, moral, and aesthetic capacities. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
