ABSTRACT
A nation's literature has traditionally been seen as a reflection of the values, tensions, myths, and psychology that identify national character. In the construction of culture and identity there are many shared values that can be discerned and revealed through story and literature. But no literary genre teaches us more about a culture and its values than the literature published for a society's children. In Britain the concept of a literary national identity is further complicated because the United Kingdom is made up of four separate nations and each constituent part claims its own distinctive identity. Within children's literature the picturebook “genre” presents an extremely rich context for the exposition of national identity, using as it does both written text and images. This article suggests that Scottish picturebooks are distinctive and challenge young readers, especially Scottish readers, to discover and recognize who they are in the face of mass market globalization in children's book publishing and thus presents particular opportunities to examine issues of identity in both the cultural and educational environment.
