How does the postmodern picture book set out to capture both the adult Essay

How does the postmodern picture book set out to capture both the adult and the child reader's interest - Essay Example By taking into account children’s literature in a record of storybook history it is likely to discern the postmodern inclination in literature and art as an act of going back to or, possibly, a rereading of the fanaticism of a Romantic perception of the relationship between an adult and reader. Postmodern thinkers, like Lyotard, question the trustworthiness of the major literatures that have governed cultural production from the time of the Enlightenment (Beckett 2001). Even though this standpoint may seem to abandon the essentialist nature of Romantic interpretations of childhood, the understood audience of postmodern picture books remains characterised in Romantic terms (Lundin 2004). The components that characterise the texts that will be discussed in this essay as postmodern may be liberating and revolutionary, but the public reading of children’s literature persists to devalue its artistic, visual and experimental value. The devaluation of writing picture books and other literature for children and its relationship with popular culture situate it in a bond with characteristics of high culture that are always challenged in postmodern theories (Thacker & Webb 2002). Moreover, the inequality of the relationship between the ‘innocent, receptive’ (ibid, p. ... nary playfulness and the inclinations of several children’s books to deconstruct require a comparison with the most revolutionary postmodern critiques of art (Moebius 2009). Questions regarding the trustworthiness of Enlightenment absolutes’ metanarratives reveal an unworkable tie between the Romantic ideas of childhood as basically naive, and the postmodern techniques that define the most stimulating current children’s literature (Whalley 2009). Although the challenges to essentialist and absolutes perspective mark postmodernism’s principles, if something quite changing can be thought to present ideologies, the strategies that define texts for children offer a more liberal reading practice that usually seems to depend on a view of children indicative of the Romantic ideas of the pre-social newborn (Browne 1999). Subversion’s components existent, specifically, in current picture books, for instance, entice children as audience to build a strong conn ection to the text and strengthen the ties between romantic disorder and postmodernism introduced by Brooker (1992). Metafictional techniques, narrative fractures, and parodic symbols which draw interest on the increasing values of literature can all be located in current picture books for children (Moebius 2009). Such elements act as a dispute to prevailing interpretations of childhood and represent an implicit audience. The array of themes which involve children and their reading practices: parents, teachers, journalists, and others, voice out an overpowering fear about the influences of present-day society on concepts of childhood as, one way or another, perfect (Goldstone 2009). The conflict in human relationships, most frequently found in the changes in family structures, and the influence of media and