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Journal article
Ekphrasis and Emotionally Intelligent Understandings of Pain in Children's Picturebooks: A Comparative Analysis of Banjo and Ruby Red (Gleeson and Blackwood 2016) and Fox (Wild and Brooks 2006)
Children's Literature in Education, Vol.Advanced access
2025
Abstract
Pain is a complex, biopsychosocial phenomenon that can be instrumental in forming our corporeal, social and emotional selves. But pain is also invisible and difficult to verbalise in explicit terms, so we rely on figurative language to communicate experiences of pain, or pain narratives. Children's picturebooks offer an opportunity to articulate pain and its biopsychosocial impacts through the synergy of visual and verbal texts, a powerful way to approximate pain's nebulosity. But how might readers summon empathy for a character in pain if they have no experience of that pain, or if indeed that pain is not visible? This research presents a comparative analysis of two Australian picturebooks regarding emotion ekphrasis and the representation of pain as a biopsychosocial phenomenon. The research takes up Maria Nikolajeva's charge (2014) that cognitive theory offers new methods of interpreting picturebooks in relation to the development of emotional intelligence and the exploration of germane social contexts. This article thereby presents a comparative analysis of emotion ekphrasis and pain in Wild and Brooks's Fox (2006), and Glee-son and Blackwood's Banjo and Ruby Red (2016). The article raises awareness of this underrepresented area of research and prompts further debate on the challenges of representing pain through visual and verbal literature for children.
Details
- Title
- Ekphrasis and Emotionally Intelligent Understandings of Pain in Children's Picturebooks: A Comparative Analysis of Banjo and Ruby Red (Gleeson and Blackwood 2016) and Fox (Wild and Brooks 2006)
- Authors
- Ross Watkins (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative IndustriesShannon Horsfall (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative IndustriesJules Richards (Author) - Queensland Children’s Hospital
- Publication details
- Children's Literature in Education, Vol.Advanced access
- Publisher
- Springer Dordrecht
- DOI
- 10.1007/s10583-025-09635-w
- ISSN
- 1573-1693; 0045-6713
- Copyright note
- This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Organisation Unit
- School of Business and Creative Industries
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991167645902621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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