Postmodern Picture Books, the Postmodernesque, and Queer Failure

Postmodern Picture Books, the Postmodernesque, and Queer Failure Lian Beveridge (bio) Allan, Cherie. Playing with Picturebooks: Postmodernism and the Postmodernesque. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012. 216pp. $90.00 hc. ISBN 978-0-23031-949-3. Print. Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature. Bossio, Paula. The Line. Toronto: Kids Can, 2013. 32pp. $16.95 hc. ISBN 978-1-894786-84-3. Print. Clanton, Ben. Vote for Me! Toronto: Kids Can, 2012. 40pp. $18.95 hc. ISBN 978-1-55453-822-5. Print. Fagan, Cary. I Wish I Could Draw. Toronto: Groundwood, 2014. 32pp. $12.95 hc. ISBN 978-1-55498-318-6. Print. Maclear, Kyo. Virginia Wolf. Illus. Isabelle Arsenault. Toronto: Kids Can, 2012. 32pp. $18.95 hc. ISBN 978-1-55453-649-8. Print. Rogers, Stan. Northwest Passage. As seen by Matt James. Toronto: Groundwood, 2013. 56pp. $24.95 hc. ISBN 978-1-55498-153-3. Print. Watt, Mélanie. Chester’s Back! Toronto: Kids Can, 2013. 32pp. $9.95 pb. ISBN 978-1-55453-461-6. Print. Young, Cybele. Ten Birds. Toronto: Kids Can, 2011. 32pp. $18.95 hc. ISBN 978-1-55453-568-2. Print. [End Page 135] For those who study picture books, the postmodern picture book has a particular allure because of its promise to take this complex and versatile genre in new and unusual directions. Cherie Allan’s recent book-length study, Playing with Picturebooks: Postmodernism and the Postmodernesque, offers insight into this contested and fascinating area. Allan’s book was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2012 as part of the Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature series edited by Kerry Mallan and Clare Bradford. The text offers a solid grounding on postmodernism and picture books, with chapters on modes of representation, reality, representations of the past, and difference. It analyzes a wide range of international picture books published between the 1980s and 2012. While Allan acknowledges that “the majority of children’s books still conform to a traditional modernist approach,” she argues that, “nevertheless, the influence of postmodernism on children’s picturebooks is significant and warrants an investigation” (19). She introduces, in her final chapter, the concept of “postmodernesque” picture books, noting that these are “not so much postmodern picturebooks as picturebooks about postmodernity” (141). She observes that “postmodernesque picturebooks have emerged from the postmodern tradition and yet exhibit a sufficient shift in direction to warrant a separate designation” (24). She offers several examples of such books as well as an illuminating discussion of how these picture books interact with the modern and the postmodern. Allan’s work is clearly written, and the new terminology she suggests is a fruitful way to think about contemporary picture books. Allan’s work provides a useful frame to consider seven picture books published by Canadian presses between 2011 and 2014. These picture books cover a wide range of topics, from Virginia Woolf’s childhood to a competitive election race, and represent a range of aesthetics, from delicate chiaroscuro illustrations to childlike pencil drawings. They all contain postmodern elements, some to a greater degree than others, and most illustrate an interest in the creative process, from drawing dragons with a Sharpie pen to building a catapult. Through an application of Allan’s work in conjunction with Judith Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure, I argue that, while the picture books meet Allan’s definition of postmodern and postmodernesque picture books only in some ways, they do offer radical possibilities through their failures. As we know, the term “postmodern” is contested and shifting, and inherently resists definition. As Allan notes, “[f]ew terms have been subjected to such intense debate as has postmodernism” (6). Nonetheless, she offers several useful ways to conceive of the postmodern picture book. Many of the picture books reviewed here fit the genre because of their use of metafiction. As Allan explains, “metafiction refers to self-reflexive fiction which intentionally draws attention to its status as fiction [End Page 136] and, in so doing, poses questions about the relationship between fiction and the reality it purports to represent” (27). Several of the picture books draw attention to their status as fiction in that they are books about making a book. I Wish I Could Draw, published...

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