A Multimodal Stylistic Analysis Of The Caldecott Medal Award-Winning Children’s Picture Books On Friendship

Children’s picture books are a new type of multimodal texts which have distinctive multimodal stylistic features.Present studies on children’s picture books mainly focus on one single book,works of famous writers and award-winning picture books.Few researches have examined children’s picture books on friendship from a multimodal stylistic perspective.Therefore,by applying the theory of multimodal stylistics,this study systematically analyzes the foregrounded multimodal features of the Caldecott Medal award-winning children’s picture books on friendship and discusses the views on friendship realized by these foregrounded multimodal features.The quantitative studies and qualitative methods are used in this study.In the present study,the quantitative studies are used to calculate the prominent features of each mode and the inter-semiotic relations.The qualitative methods are used to decide whether these prominent features are foregrounded features or not.The major findings of this study are as follows: Firstly,material processes,relational processes and mental processes are foregrounded process types of verbal mode.Active actions made by children and animals highlight the importance of mutual help,care,and accompaniment among friends.Through a combination of passive verbs,the view on friendship represented by these foregrounded process verbs is that children should actively seek out friends.The circumstances of location constitute the foregrounded features,indicating places that children are familiar with.Then action processes,reactional processes and symbolic processes are foregrounded features of image mode.With animals and children as the major participants,action processes and reactional processes reflect the selfless sacrifice and warm interaction between friends.Through a combination of symbolic processes,such as white and black boys representing different races and different animals representing different personalities,these processes highlight the views on friendship reflected in stories that friendship can span races and children should tolerate friends of different personalities.Thirdly,the disordered layout and the balloon-shaped layout are the foregrounded layout,making children’s picture books more artistic and reflecting the intimacy between friends.Fourthly,blue,green,white,brown,black,red,yellow and color variation constitute the foregrounded color.The comparison between the bleak forest,the strange world and the dangerous river depicted by blue,green,white,brown and black and the colorful forest and the warm atmosphere depicted by red and yellow highlights the crucial role of friends.Meanwhile the change of color from cool color to warm color conveys the view on friendship that friends can enlighten children’s world.Fifthly,the irregular typefaces and the bold typefaces are foregrounded features of typography.The irregular typefaces,such as handwriting and capital typefaces,make readers feel personally on the scene.The bold typefaces further highlight characters’ thoughts.Finally,the intensified complementary relationships between verbal mode and image,verbal mode and typography,and verbal mode and color are the foregrounded inter-semiotic relations,which coordinate to reveal the view on friendship that friends are indispensable for children’s development.This study not only reveals the foregrounded multimodal stylistic features of the Caldecott Medal award-winning children’s picture books on friendship,but also verifies the applicability of multimodal stylistics in interpreting children’s picture books.