New Challenges in Children’s Illustration in Portugal

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to reflect on some of the current trends in Portuguese illustration for children, focusing on an intertextual reading of the picturebooks written and illustrated by Manuela Bacelar, as a precursor in the creation of this kind of book in Portugal. Based on the discursive interdependence of text and illustrations, stylistic and technical-narrative procedures are observed, in necessary articulation with the visual/graphic and material/peritextual aspects. The potential of these aspects is highlighted in the composition of the work and in the construction of its multiple semiosis. The interdependence of text and illustrations poses specific requirements in the process of reading and has an impact on the formation of competent and autonomous readers. Relying on modern literary currents to be found in a postmodernist aesthetic, this paper examines the corpus, from both a technical and compositional point of view, seeking to investigate some of the traits and formal rhetorical, stylistic and thematic resources that distinguish the work of this awarded artist.