ABSTRACT
This chapter explores six degrees of closeness, beginning with the circumstances of the approach to the picture book, the tour through its openings as visitors in a kind of museum of double-page spreads within which the "no touching" rule is permanently suspended. Picture books and paintings both appeal to the eyes, regardless of the age of the viewer. The counterpoint of the phenomena of absorption and theatricality are very much a part of the reading of the picture book: even the cover of a picture book may generate fifteen minutes of absorption and reflection, but the turning of the page inaugurates an element of theatricality. Both paintings in a museum and picture books appeal to their viewers to approach them, to close the gap between them in a physical way. In a museum, one is attracted to a particular painting, as if it were issuing a demand to be looked at more closely.
