37.1185, Calls: Textes et Contextes - "Special Issue: Using English-language Picturebooks to Teach and Learn English from Primary to Secondary School" (Jrnl)

Mon Mar 23 20:05:01 UTC 2026

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-1185. Mon Mar 23 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.1185, Calls: Textes et Contextes - "Special Issue: Using English-language Picturebooks to Teach and Learn English  from Primary to Secondary School" (Jrnl)

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Date: 23-Mar-2026
From: Elise Ouvrard [elise.ouvrard at unicaen.fr]
Subject: Textes et Contextes - "Special Issue: Using English-language Picturebooks to Teach and Learn English  from Primary to Secondary School" (Jrnl)

Journal: Textes et Contextes
Issue: Using English-language Picturebooks to Teach and Learn English
from Primary to Secondary School
Call Deadline: 30-Apr-2026

Call for submissions for the June 2027 issue of Textes et Contextes
(22-1)
“Using English-language Picturebooks to Teach and Learn English from
Primary to Secondary School”
Children's literature picturebooks are visual literary works, the
narration of which relies on iconography that is essential to the
unfolding of the story, its context, or its characters. They are
objects to be handled – in fact, the materiality of picturebooks is
one of their particularly prominent characteristics (Ouvrard, 2022).
Finally, the singular nature of these iconotexts often resides in the
dialogic reading they foster: they lend themselves easily to shared
reading experiences, whether silently or aloud.
Given that the simultaneous presence of text and images involves two
different semiotic codes, reading a picturebook or talking about one
requires the cross-activation of two mechanisms: verbal literacy and
visual literacy. In the case of wordless picturebooks (such as A Stone
for Sascha by Aaron Becker, 2018, or Migrants by Issa Watanabe, 2019,
for example), it is the reader who proposes his/her own script and
verbalizes it.
Since meaning must necessarily be deployed along two different axes
(visual and verbal), the creators of picturebooks, as well as the
professionals working in this particular area of publishing, cultivate
the art of discrepancy. In 1988, Maurice Sendak, referring to Randolph
Caldecott (1846-1886), whom he considers the father of the modern
picturebook, used the term "syncopation," in its musical sense, to
define the rhythmic gap that exists between the content of the images
and that of the text. Words and pictures are never quite where you
expect them to be, they never quite land on the same beat; a
surprising, original and fruitful gap exists between them.
The other secret to the construction of picturebooks is the work on
details and secret clues. To interpret the meaning or to offer a
commentary on what one sees, one must pay attention to anything likely
to be visually meaningful, as Serafini explains in Reading the Visual:
An Introduction to Teaching Multimodal Literacy (2014) and listen
carefully to all the sounds (Orange, Pear, Apple, Bear, Emily Gravett,
2006) It may even involve recognizing the absence of visual and/or
oral elements the reader would expect to find, the absence of which
becomes significant. The reader is thus trained to perceive and
unravel a large bundle of clues, prompting them to reason based on
what they have perceived.
Thus, as a short form, sharp and deceivingly simple, the picturebook
presents, for each of its published titles, a unique take on a given
topic in just a few pages. Today, there are dozens and dozens of
picturebooks that deal with a wide range of subjects with conciseness
and originality, displaying different artistic techniques, different
cultural contents (Burgain, 2018), and varied ways of highlighting
language (Partridge Salomon, 2019). In their oral form, picturebooks
echo the phonological characteristics of the English language.
A well-chosen picturebook can thus prove to be a highly productive
learning medium, enabling numerous linguistic activities around
culturally and philosophically rich themes. One of the characteristics
of contemporary picturebooks is their ability to engage readers, both
young and old, with societal issues (Haaland, Kümmerling-Meibauer, and
Ommundsen, 2022) thus allowing the language teacher to work on various
objectives relating to citizenship. It is this challenge, rooted in a
perspective of literary didactics, that we will be examining in this
issue of Textes et Contextes.
Please send a one-page abstract, in French or in English, with a short
bio-bibliography, to the editors, (veronique.alexandre at unicaen.fr;
christine.colliere-whiteside at u-bourgogne.fr; elise.ouvrard at unicaen.fr)
by 30 April 2026. The published articles, once the proposals are
accepted, can be written in French or in English.
References:
Bang Molly (2016) [1991]. Picture This: How Pictures Work. San
Francisco: Chronicle Books.
Bland Janice (2013). Children’s Literature and Learner Empowerment:
Children and Teenagers in English Language Education. London:
Bloomsbury.
Burgain Marie-France (2018). Pratiques transfictionnelles en classe de
langue à l’école primaire, Recherches en didactique des langues et des
cultures, 15-3.
Haaland, Gunnar, Kümmerling-Meibauer, Bettina et Ommundsen, Ase
(2022). Exploring Challenging Picturebooks in Education. New York:
Routledge.
Mourão, Sandie. (2023). The effectiveness of picturebooks for
intercultural awareness in foreign language education: A scoping
study. Zeitschrift für Interkulturellen Fremdsprachenunterricht,
28(1), 173-209.
Nodelman Perry (2008). The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s
Literature. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University.
Ouvrard Elise (2022). The Children’s Illustrated Literature Book in an
Elementary School English Session: An Object Considered in its
Materiality? in Bisault Joël, Le Bourgeois Roselyne, Thémines
Jean-François, Le Mentec Mickaël and Chauvet-Chanoine Céline (dir.),
Objects to Learn About and Objects for Learning: Which Teaching
Practices for Which Issues? London: ISTE Group, pp. 3-20.
Partridge Salomon Jill Kay (2019). La littérature de jeunesse
anglophone dans l’enseignement de l’anglais à l’école primaire, Les
Langues Modernes, n° 2, 24-30.
Prince Nathalie et Thiltges Sébastian (dir.) (2018). Eco-Graphies –
Ecologie et littératures pour la jeunesse. Presses Universitaires de
Rennes.
Rose Gillian (2023) [2006]. Visual Methodologies: an introduction to
researching with visual materials (5th edition). London: Thousand
Oaks.
Sendak Maurice (1988). Caldecott & Co.: Notes on Books and Pictures.
New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux.
Serafini Frank (2014). Reading the Visual: An Introduction to Teaching
Multimodal Literacy. New York: Teacher College Press.

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics
                     Language Acquisition
                     Ling & Literature

Subject Language(s): English (eng)

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