Lene Asks Kjære Rikard som utgangspunkt for utvikling av emosjonell literacy og mentaliseringsevne

Abstract

Abstract The article explores whether reading Lene Ask’s documentary graphic novel Kjære Rikard (‘Dear Rikard’) may provide children and adults with training in, and an increased awareness of the importance of, emotional literacy and theory of mind. In order to investigate this question, the authors of the article conduct a close reading of Ask’s novel, using terminology from narratology, picture book and comics’ theory, and look for connections between the findings from the analyses and insights from reader-response theory and cognitive literary studies. The authors suggest that in combination, Ask’s fictive and documentarist drawings and the excerpts from the hand-written correspondence between young Rikard in Stavanger and his father, a missionary in Madagaskar in the 1890s, invite both children and adult readers to develop a keen sense of the value of emotional literacy and theory of mind.