The role of narrative in nonfiction picturebooks; A diagrammatic analysis to define the creative nonfiction picturebook

The role of narrative in nonfiction picturebooks is largely overlooked by picturebook theories that focus mainly on the interactions between verbal and visual interactions in picturebooks described as fiction. My research in storytelling in nonfiction picturebooks started with the identification of books that would fall into this otherwise undefined category. This led me to construct a visual model of analysis, based on the theory of modality, that enabled me to visually represent the verbal and visual interactions of both nonfiction and fiction narratives in picturebooks. This paper demonstrates how this visual model can be used to identify and quantify narrative interactions using a selection of the picturebooks studied, covering key non fiction subject areas. It concludes that the visual model suggested could, further to making creative non fiction picturebooks identifiable and therefore more accessible, be used in combination with picturebook theory to analyse all genres of picturebooks.