Children's literature plays an important role in conveying cultural norms, expectations, ideals, values and attitudes to young children (Cherland, 2006). Misperceptions about child characters can lead to long-term consequences such as a decreased sense of self-worth and a limited perception of abilities, aspirations and accepted roles and behaviors (Adams, Walker, and O'Connell, 2011; McCabe, Fairchild, Grauerholz, Pescosolido, and Tope, 2011; Santora, 2013). Due to the great role that comic books, in general, and children's images portrayed in comic books, in particular, play in the formation and development of children’s personalities, this study uses the Appraisal Theory of Martin and White (2005) and Kress and Vanleeuwen's Grammar of visual design framework (2006) to study how English and Vietnamese picture books for children use words and images to create a coherent, communicative story, depicting the image of children in modern life. Research shows that words and images have a complementary effect in portraying children's characters in comics. And in generally, children's characters are depicted pro-socially in both English and Vietnamese picture books for children. However, while the children's characters in English picture books are quite positively portrayed throughout the stories, those Vietnamese counterparts tend to make mistakes and misbehave at first, before being guided and helped to become better socially. The study also reveals that visually child characters are respected, through the horizontal and vertical angles depicted; Vietnamese child protagonists, though, are more likely to be looked down from the higher angle to show the power of judgment from the readers and adult characters in this genre of children’s literature.

Authors:
Ha Nguyen Thi Dieu, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam

About the Presenter(s)
Nguyễn Thi Dieu Ha, a lecturer and course designer at University of Languages and International Studies, is a course designer. She has been the first author and coauthor of the English text book series in the national curriculum.

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