Subversive rewritings and children literature. When picture books give the voice of the classic tale characters

Abstract

Picture books, a rising genre inside of children and youth literature, can be defined as the literary product articulated on the dialog established between the written expression, visual language and material nature of the book as an object. This configuration has enabled a whole literary tradition to be rewritten over new parameters. Focusing on the adaptation processes from the classic tales to the illustrated album, this article is going to follow an arc of literary works that, having played with the perspective of the narrative, have divert from the version culturally inherited as they tell the story from the point of view of one of its characters. Within these rewrittings there is something subversive because, when giving voice to the protagonists, not only they recreate but also they question the past of the literature. Our analysis will allow us to discover, from a comparatist regard, how the illustrated album utilizes metaphyctional strategies to propose a cultural review of the classic tales.