From Slate to Slate:What Does the Future Hold for the Picturebook Series?

Abstract

Technological advances and picturebook studies do not typically go hand in hand. There has long existed, not only a large divide between the two, but an unarticulated friction as well. Picturebooks as artifacts have certain elements of their makeup that cannot fully be replicated. It is no wonder, then, that for years now, technology such as computer software, although attempting to mimic aspects of a picturebook reading experience, had never truly attained its end. The particular technological product considered here is the iPad, a recent phenomenon I view to hold a potential turning point in the way the picturebook, in particular those in series, will be received. Drawing from existing scholarship on picturebooks, series fiction for children, and paratextual components of texts, the exploration is based on inquiring into and pointing to parallels in form between a conventional codex picturebook and its equivalent - the hypertextual variety it has been adapted into. The aim, thus, is to demonstrate that the technology has managed to come much closer to what a picturebook is and means. The particular picturebook App examined, one in a series, is Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat.

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