Edinburgh Napier University

  This is a special issue of Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics exploring the relationships of picturebooks and comics with notions of childhood. There have been productive readings in relation to the mechanics of both these media such as Maria Nikoljeva and
Carole Scott’s How Picturebooks Work (2001) and Thierry Groensteen’s The System of Comics (2007), as well as extensive research on the history and specific creators of children’s picturebooks. However, much less attention has been paid to the intersection
between these comics, picturebooks and constructions of childhood. This is an area that is potentially significant, as the understandings and definitions of childhood held by creators, publishers, teachers and others shape both what is offered to actual child readers and
how children are depicted in texts. We believe, then, that focusing on constructions of childhood, rather than education, or reading for pleasure, is an important area of enquiry that opens the fields of childhood studies and visual culture to new debates.