Reading Visual Narratives Image Analysis of Children's Picture Books

Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty, professionals, and practitioners.
Choice, Vol 50.11
Overall, Reading Visual Narrativesis an important contribution to the field of social semiotics, in general, and to the study of visual-verbal narratives in children’s picture books, in particular. Painter et al. have produced a work that is (almost) as fascinating as the material upon which it is based.
LinguistList, June 2013
This book should be of particular interest to those looking to diversify their work with images in educational contexts, since it offers theoretically sound networks and frameworks to inform analysis at varying levels. The greatest achievements of this volume have been to call further attention to the relevance of images as semiotic resources in their own right, to adapt and extend previous work on visual meaning, thus contributing to the field in a very practical manner, and to provide a framework to deal with meanings that arise from the interrelation between verbal language and images - all of that adding to our understanding that multimodal texts should be seen as indispensable resources in fostering literacy projects that aim to emancipate people to become critical readers in contemporary society.
Discourse Studies
A very important contribution to our knowledge of how meaning is construed in picture books. In addition, the authors develop very good tools for analysing primarily images in picture books, but also for analysing the interplay between the two semiotic systems creating the narrative in picture books. The detailed visual analyses developed especially for picture books inspire the readers to further analyses, and give great help on their way. The many system networks developed by the authors give detailed and insightful overviews of the options that illustrators have when they create images, and a deeper understanding of how meaning is realised in images. It is especially commendable that the authors have not concentrated their presentations and analyses to single pages or spreads; instead every chapter pays attention to how the images realise an unfolding story. The use of good and clarifying examples contributes to their presentation and makes the text easily accessible to both students and researchers in spite of the detailed social semiotic terminology. Thank you for a very good book!
Functions of Language