ABSTRACT
What exactly was it that 11-year-old Abdul found shocking about “where the words are” in Oliver Jeffers’ picturebook, The Incredible Book Eating Boy? Abdul was from a Muslim Algerian family and spoke both Arabic and French. He had been in the United Kingdom for approximately four years and his English was quite fl uent. As he and his classmates read and talked about Jeffers’ picturebook, Abdul laughed at the jokes in the text and at the illustrations. He did not seem to have any problems understanding the postmodern features of this book-the comic-strip features, metafi ction, fragmentation, open-endedness, and the use of different fonts or the open ending. Once we talked further, his comment became clearer: he was referring not only to the spatial arrangement of the text on the spreads, but also to the way the artist has placed both text and illustrations on backgrounds of different types of paper and book materials, some of which have words printed on them. Like most of his peers, Abdul was both surprised and fascinated by the way the artist has “used” bits of old books and other materials to create his picturebook but he was the one who expressed his feelings most strongly about it.
