Personification Metaphors in Children’s Picturebooks about Nature: A Multimodal Cognitive Stylistic Study

Abstract

This paper examines multimodal personification metaphors representing the natural world and human–nature relationships in three recent Caldecott award-winning picturebooks about nature – Outside In (2020), Wonder Walkers (2021), and Have You Ever Seen a Flower? (2021). It argues that verbal and pictorial metaphors collaboratively conceptualise inanimate and less perceivable entities in the natural world in terms of animate and more perceivable entities in the human world. The personifying and anthropomorphic metaphors in these picturebooks integrate the human and natural worlds and foster the development of ecological thinking and emotional connections in young readers. It concludes that multimodal personification metaphors build close human–nature connections and encourage children to explore ecological meaning by themselves.

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