ABSTRACT
Research in the broader field of children's literature and in the picturebook now comes under many flags, not a few of which wave over literary studies, but there is room for other approaches as well. Research perspectives that favor the study of language, such as spoken language development or language pedagogy, discourse analysis or poetics, may thrive in the world of children's literature, but need special adaptation to the realm of picturebooks. Research on the picturebook may and often must exceed the boundaries of children's book research. The poem tells us just how useful the picturebook might or might not be for the child to gain insight into the world, especially as concerns 'representation.' The poem gently problematizes picturebook representation in a world increasingly complicated by the business of empire, the traffic of immigration, and the breakdown of terminologies for gendered subjects.
