Narrative uses and meanings of the gutter: contributions to the study of metafictional contemporary picturebooks

Using a corpus of contemporary picturebooks that explore the narrative potential of the gutter, this study intends to reflect on the impact of using metafictional procedures in the context of children's literature, underlining the way in which sophistication and complexity inherent to these strategies are also at the service of playfulness and entertainment for younger readers. The materiality of the picturebook and its graphic design not only play a role in the construction of an aesthetically sophisticated and appealing artifact, but also intervene in the action and in the narrative conflict, in a self-referential strategy. This text also proposes a typology of the different types of functionalities of the gutter in the volumes where it plays a narrative role, defining four distinct typologies: physical partition, imagined partition, frame and movement creation mechanism.