Representations of Museums and Museum Visits in Narrative Picturebooks

Abstract

Drawing on a range of theoretical frameworks to illuminate various aspects of visual and textual representations, this study analyses the ways museums, museum visits, and museum exhibits and activities are represented in contemporary narrative picturebooks featuring a child character going to a museum for a variety of reasons. Analysis of approximately fifty museum picturebooks using a multimodal content analysis tool led to the construction of findings in the following themes: representations of museums; representations of museum exhibits; museum visitors; reasons for museum visits; museum activities and events; children’s attitudes while visiting museums; and metaleptic transgressions in picturebook representations. The findings suggest the potential implications of these multimodal texts in the hands of teachers and young readers.