Painless Picture Books: A Comparative Analysis of Verbal and Visual Representations of Pain in Australian Picture Books

Ross Watkins; Julianne Richards; Shannon Horsfall

doi:10.1080/20512856.2025.2558246

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Painless Picture Books: A Comparative Analysis of Verbal and Visual Representations of Pain in Australian Picture Books

Journal article

Open access

Peer reviewed

Painless Picture Books: A Comparative Analysis of Verbal and Visual Representations of Pain in Australian Picture Books

Ross Watkins, Julianne Richards and Shannon Horsfall

Journal of Language, Literature and Culture, Vol.72(2), pp.132-148

2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/20512856.2025.2558246

Appears in UniSC Diversity and Inclusion Research Collection

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Abstract

Creative writing (incl. scriptwriting)

Expanding knowledge in creative arts and writing studies

Literature

Human pain management

picturebook

pain

biopsychosocial

children's literature

Australia

visual literacy

verbal literacy

pain representation

pain literacy

UniSC Diversity Area - Life Stages

Pain is an inevitable and complex lived experience with the potential to shape our individual identities and the quality of interactions with the world. As a primary form of children’s literature, picture books offer children a space to explore the experience of pain to increase understanding of this multifaceted phenomenon. How, then, is pain currently depicted in commercial children’s picture books in Australia, and how might those depictions speak to current pain scholarship? This research presents comparative textual analysis of five Australian picture books regarding the representation of pain, viewed through the lens of a biopsychosocial understanding of pain. The article introduces the research problem and background, outlines the method employed, presents aspects of our textual analysis followed by the study’s key findings, then raises discussion points regarding the analyses within the context of picture book theory and pain theory. The article concludes that while children have access to literature promoting pain literacy, the representation of pain is limited due the perseverance of dichotomous views of pain and recovery, and the challenges associated with expressing this complex phenomenon in verbal and visual media.

Details

Title: Painless Picture Books: A Comparative Analysis of Verbal and Visual Representations of Pain in Australian Picture Books
Authors: Ross Watkins (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative Industries
Julianne Richards (Author) - The University of Queensland
Shannon Horsfall (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative Industries
Publication details: Journal of Language, Literature and Culture, Vol.72(2), pp.132-148
Publisher: Routledge
Date published: 2025
DOI: 10.1080/20512856.2025.2558246
ISSN: 2051-2864; 2051-2856
Copyright note: © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Organisation Unit: School of Business and Creative Industries
Language: English
Record Identifier: 991173845902621
Output Type: Journal article

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Collaboration types: Domestic collaboration
Web Of Science research areas: Language & Linguistics; Literature

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