Den poetiska zonen. Poesins performativa potential i bilderböcker för barn

Johan Alfredsson, Department of Literature, History of Ideas, and Religion, University of Gothenburg The Poetic Zone: The Performative Potential of Poetry in Picturebooks for Children (Den poetiska zonen. Poesins performativa potential i bilderböcker för barn) This article discusses how picturebooks for children can make use of poetry in order to empower child readers to bridge the asymmetric aetonormativity between child and adult inherent in the picturebook format. The article launches the concept of the poetic zone, springing from both epistemologically based poetry theory and norm critical theory. Two picturebooks are used as examples: Gro Dahle’s and Svein Nyhus’s Snill [What a Girl!], from 2002, and Lina Ekdahl and Emma Hanquist’s Vi smular vi härmar en gök [We Crumble We Imitate a Cuckoo], from 2016. Analyses of the poetic qualities of the two books show how they both pinpoint, and performatively empower, the child reader’s perspective. This takes place in the relationships between child and adult within the books’ plots, as well as in relation to the picturebook format. The poetic qualities that contribute in this sense concern both imagery, and rhythmical as well as auditory aspects of language.