ABSTRACT
The privileged status of images in knowledge transmission has led to an exciting convergence of informational literature and the picturebook format in the past three decades, resulting in innovative informational picturebooks that more often than not transcend the boundaries of media, genre, gender, and age. The range of artistic styles and media in informational picturebooks is equally impressive, leaving the image types and media of traditional nonfiction far behind or reinventing them. Given the importance of informational books in general and informational picturebooks in particular in publishing, libraries, and schools, it is rather striking that scholarship on the topic is scarce and scattered. Library and information studies continue to be the driving discipline in the promotion and study of informational literature. While informational books may seem especially threatened in the digital age, in which facts are just a click or touch away and images are easy to come by, publishers, writers, and artists have typically responded in several ways.
