Читать книгу A Companion to Children's Literature - Группа авторов - Страница 55

This chapter focuses on the historical development of the picturebook from 1945 to the end of the twentieth century. Such an enterprise cannot do justice to all relevant artistic, historical, political, and societal transformations that impacted on the changes that the picturebook has undergone during a time period of more than fifty years. Hence, this chapter emphasizes the most relevant turns in the conceptualization of the picturebook in North America and parts of Europe. A starting point for the period was the shifts in political and historical as well as cultural developments, since these caused more or less radical changes related to the concept of childhood as well as the artistic and narrative affordances of picturebooks. The first section concentrates on the first five years after World War II, when publishers and picturebook artists faced the multifaceted challenges of a postwar society. The second section focuses on the period of 1950–1965, which witnessed new trends in picturebook design and art. The subsequent time span, 1965–1980, saw the surge of the Pop Art picturebook and other experiments in picturebook design. The final decades of the twentieth century showed the growing impact of transmediation and media franchises as well as the increasing hybridization of the picturebook, which led to the emergence of the postmodern picturebook. Since these tendencies go hand in hand with a transgression of age boundaries, crossover picturebooks increasingly dominated the picturebook market.