The thesis consists of two parts - the first one is theoretical and the second empirical. The first chapter of the theoretical part describes the modern short fairy tale and its characteristics, based on Marjana Kobe’s theory, the history and the classification of the picturebook as an artwork as discussed by Martin Salisbury and Morag Styles.
The second chapter presents multiple theories that are the basis for the picturebook analysis and the thesis. These theories are the literary theory by Marjana Kobe (1999, 2000), and the literary universals theory by Patrick Colm Hogan (1997), the cognitive theories by Marija Nikolajeva (2003) and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Jӧrg Meubauer (2011) and the neuroscientific theories by Paul B. Armstrnong (2015) and Zvezdan Pirtošek (2016).
The following chapter is a synthesis of the three theories, in the form of categories that the literary, cognitive and neuroscientific theory have in common. These categories are the basis for the analysis of the chosen picturebooks.
The empirical part consists of an analysis of three chosen picturebooks: The Snowman (1978) by Raymond Briggs, We Honestly Can Look After Your Dog (2006) by Lauren Child, and A Boy and a House (2014) by Maja Kastelic. The analysis is followed by an interpretation of findings. Both the analysis and the interpretation are based on the categories that appear in the three previously presented theories. The categories are based on the common findings of all of the theories listed above, and are as follow: the child and the adult, the human face, basic visual elements: colors, lines and light, space and background, symmetry, the aesthetic emotion and feelings, universality, verbal art, and the relation between verbal and visual,
The last chapter of the thesis consists of the picturebook’s potential use in teaching and learning and the possibilities for expanded further research.
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