What's in “the gap”? A glance down the central concept of picturebook theory

摘要

This article proposes a metacritical analysis of the concept of the “readerly gap” in picturebooks, as theorised by scholars of picturebook research—whether theoretical or empirical. In contemporary picturebook research, gaps are both a descriptive and a normative feature of picturebooks: they both define this type of literature and are seen as guarantees of its aesthetic quality and sophistication. They are also a crucial aspect of studies of young reader's responses to picturebooks, many of which are concerned with how children manage to navigate and “fill” gaps in iconotexts. Readerly gaps are perceived, it seems, as spaces belonging mostly to the reader, somewhat outside of the picturebook; in particular, they are seen as at least mostly protected from adult influence. I argue that the concept of the readerly gap is an interestingly paradoxical creation of adult scholars. Both empirical research on children reading picturebooks and theoretical picturebook studies reinforce the assumption that children are better “gap-fillers” than adults and that they can on occasion become teachers to adults as to how to interpret picturebooks. This optimistically child-centred epistemology stands in stark contrast to contemporary theoretical approaches to children's literature, which insists on the aetonormative quality of such texts. However, the readerly gap, which I prefer to call a didactic gap, remains a space surrounded with and controlled by an adult injunction. It is beyond the picturebook, beyond even the experience of reading and of exploring children's experiences of reading, that the fundamental indeterminacy of the picturebook gap can be truly said to dwell.