The Poetics of Maternal Picturebooks for Babies: An Attempt at Defining an Ambivalent Genre

Abstract

Motherhood has recently become a central topic in a certain kind of picturebook meant for babies that do not tell a story about mothers and children, but rather focus on feelings linked to the mother-baby bond. These picturebooks, which have experienced a notable increase in the last ten years, share a main topic (the maternal bond), format (small board book) and approach (lyrical). We refer to them as “maternal picturebooks”, and the purpose of this article is to define and characterise them as an emergent, yet consolidated subgenre meant for babies. To do so, we will establish a corpus of twelve maternal picturebooks published in several different languages in recent years (Spanish, Catalan, Italian, French, and English). Subsequently we will analyse this corpus focusing on three main aspects. First, we will discuss how peritexts and epitexts draw in the intended readers and propose a reading program that involves both babies and parents. Second, we will analyse the voices that can be heard in the texts, or who speaks in the texts (mostly a mother) and to whom. And finally, we will focus on illustrations, particularly regarding the role of nature as a metaphorical and idealized replica of the mother-baby bond.