The potential of sound picturebooks as multimodal narratives

Abstract

In this article, we study how Sound Picturebooks constitute a multimodal narrative that enables students to develop their literacy, not only in terms of basic reading and writing skills, but also as a multidimensional interaction with other forms of representation such as images, sounds and actions. In line with the aims of the Pedagogy of Multiliteracies (New London Group 1996), we select and analyze fifteen Sound Picturebooks whose features allows us to implement the Learning by Design tenets and the four pedagogical components of the Knowledge Processes Framework: experiencing, conceptualizing, analyzing and applying. The goal is to foster basic multimodal literacies – literary, linguistic, visual and musical – and provide learners with the opportunity to construct meaning as a dynamic process of transformation and creative inquiry. Specifically, we explore the auditory features that these Sound Picturebooks contain and the extent to which the themes conveyed in the stories can be connected with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for the further discussion of social concerns. Our analyzes show that such multimodal narratives integrate crucial features to cultivate and broaden students’ multiliteracies in the classroom.