Travelling from the city to the countryside: Depictions of urban and rural scenarios in two Portuguese picturebooks

Abstract

Research has shown that Nature is frequently found as an important element in children’s literature. Despite being depicted in a rather superfi cial and stereotypical way and touched by humanity, it is usually represented as a fun, harmonious and even idyllic component of the story. This construction of the natural world depends on the power of language to create scenarios, shaping the way Nature is perceived, merging the aesthetic, recreational and pedagogical dimensions of children’s literature. The objective of this study is to identify how these dimensions intersect and how the theme of ecoliteracy is dealt with by focusing on two main perspectives: (a) linguistic perspective: resorting to the principles of the identifi cation of frames and their interpretative repertoire; (b) literary and semiotic perspective: establishing text-picture relationships and dynamics according to the postmodern theories on picturebooks. In order to do this, the study focuses on two children’s picturebooks published in 2009, which tell stories of car journeys involving families travelling from an urban setting to a rural one. These two picturebooks represent various forms of subjective appropriation of space and promote ecoliteracy through the relationship between the child protagonists and the surrounding environment.

Keywords: children’s literature, picturebook, nature, ecoliteracy, linguistic constructivism.