ABSTRACT
The first time I met Theo van Leeuwen (and Gunther Kress) was at a conference in London in 1989. After this occasion, I invited both of them to a conference on pedagogic texts in Härnösand (at what is now Mid-Sweden University). Theo came a few days earlier to Stockholm from Sydney, and the two of us started to discuss how one could analyse school textbooks. We talked eagerly about the differences between knowledge representations and semiotic signs in two history textbooks, one Swedish and one Australian, starting at my kitchen table in Stockholm and continuing on the train to Härnösand and then again on the train back to Stockholm.
