Deciphering the picture book. Issuance, reception and analysis strategies

At first glance, illustrated albums present a series of characteristics that make them not go unnoticed in the displays of a library or a bookstore and that differentiate them of other literary works that also contain images. We are referring fundamentally to its design, its format, the quality of its illustrations or to the space they occupy on the support. This is what, in principle, invites us to stop and flip through the book. But what makes them really different is that they merge two languages, that of the text (conventional signs) and that of the image (iconic signs). The result forces the reader to also become a spectator in order to read the textual code and the code visual at the same time or deciding which reads first and which reads later. In the reading process, the reader/viewer will have an active participation in the construction meaning and, for that reason, it will be common for you to have to fill in empty spaces in information between pages, or you will see how the image can displace the text or even be You will be surprised because the text disappears and reappears several pages later.