Representaciones de un mundo complejo: No tinc paraules de Arnal Ballester

Abstract

This article looks at how two factors come into play in children's books: the assumption of simplicity and the double target-reader. In the first of these, the child is assumed to lack the intellectual maturity of an adult and the topics, motifs and representations must accordingly be simpler. Studies on approaches to reading and reception, however, reveal that children make critical, sophisticated readers. The double target-reader is the child plus the adult who tends to read along when the child is very young. This adult will take on a prominent role in the process of communication that takes place between an author and the two target readers. And the publishing industry, in turn, provides books designed to please that adult, who browses, chooses and buys.  All these factors conflict with the child's need to build up his/her symbolic imaginary through complex stories and representations.  This raises the question of how today's author-illustrators of children's books can make those layers of depth visible or not, and find devices for showing complex meanings in formats like the picture book. The book "No tinc paraules", by Arnal Ballester is studied in detail: a book in which the illustrator chooses motifs like eroticism, love, and reflections on identity, making the child the principal target reader of a story that the child himself/herself must construct, and allowing the adult to be a companion in this. This book can serve to show how graphic experimentation and ideas can be contained within a single space.