''Look More Closely,' Said Mum': Mothers in Anthony Browne's Picture Books.

In this article, Vanessa Joosen explores Anthony Browne's construction of motherhood in four of his picture books that focus on family. She focuses on the use of narratological perspective, visual point of view, and intertextual references to explain how an ideology of motherhood is evoked. While Br...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Children's Literature in Education Vol. 46; no. 2; pp. 145 - 160
Main Author: Joosen, Vanessa
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature Jun2015
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        Browne, Anthony
        Motherhood in literature
        Picture books for children
        Piggybook (Book)
        My Mum (Book)
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          Browne, Anthony
          Motherhood in literature
          Picture books for children
          Piggybook (Book)
          My Mum (Book)
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        Anthony Browne
        Family stories
        Gender
        Ideology
        Motherhood
        Picture books
      ab: In this article, Vanessa Joosen explores Anthony Browne's construction of motherhood in four of his picture books that focus on family. She focuses on the use of narratological perspective, visual point of view, and intertextual references to explain how an ideology of motherhood is evoked. While Browne makes use of child narrators and focalizers whose view of their mothers is limited, some of his picture books contain illustrations that further explore the mother's psyche and move beyond the child's point of view. His construction of motherhood over the years follows rather than sets trends. Piggybook offers a rather simplistic role reversal in the heyday of second-wave feminism and My Mum conforms to postfeminist new momism. Zoo and The Shape Game are more artistically complex and open-ended in their possible interpretations of the mother's psyche. In all four books, Browne's mothers, especially in comparison to his fathers, are depicted with more responsibilities: the families rely on the mother's presence and care for their coherence and emotional well-being. The mothers invariably bring a sense of civilization and sophistication to Browne's fictional families.
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