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Chapter 1. Shades of feeling

Brightness, dramatic irony, and risk in A Perfect Day and Grandpa Green

Abstract

This chapter discusses how author-illustrator Lane Smith manipulates formal aesthetic elements to activate involuntary emotional responses that influence meaning. Specifically, it works with systems neuroscience to discuss the unease in A Perfect Day and the ways the emotional impact of risky content gets flattened in Grandpa Green. Systems neuroscience examines processes that underlie and inform conscious thought and offers a complementary approach to the investigation of emotional meaning in picturebook illustration. Rather than addressing concepts of mental imagery, self-awareness, language, or mental activity that are the bedrock of normative analysis, the neuroscience of the visual system allows us to view picturebook narratives from a different perspective, and to discover significances that might not be evident by way of conceptual analysis alone.

Abstract

This chapter discusses how author-illustrator Lane Smith manipulates formal aesthetic elements to activate involuntary emotional responses that influence meaning. Specifically, it works with systems neuroscience to discuss the unease in A Perfect Day and the ways the emotional impact of risky content gets flattened in Grandpa Green. Systems neuroscience examines processes that underlie and inform conscious thought and offers a complementary approach to the investigation of emotional meaning in picturebook illustration. Rather than addressing concepts of mental imagery, self-awareness, language, or mental activity that are the bedrock of normative analysis, the neuroscience of the visual system allows us to view picturebook narratives from a different perspective, and to discover significances that might not be evident by way of conceptual analysis alone.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. List of figures vii
  4. Introduction 1
  5. Chapter 1. Shades of feeling 18
  6. Chapter 2. The sublimity of darkness and its affective transmission and subduing in picturebooks 42
  7. Chapter 3. Tengo Miedo 62
  8. Chapter 4. Literalizing emotions in Disney and Pixar 83
  9. Chapter 5. The angry caregiver 104
  10. Chapter 6. Sad girls 130
  11. Chapter 7. The cultural politics of confidence in Chetan Bhagat’s select fiction 152
  12. Chapter 8. The affective construction of Chinese child citizenship in Little Friend , 1945–1949 170
  13. Chapter 9. Taking the reluctance out of reluctant reading 193
  14. Chapter 10. Emotion and the work of decolonization 217
  15. Contributors 235
  16. Index 239
Emotion in Texts for Children and Young Adults
This chapter is in the book Emotion in Texts for Children and Young Adults
https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.13.01lam

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. List of figures vii
  4. Introduction 1
  5. Chapter 1. Shades of feeling 18
  6. Chapter 2. The sublimity of darkness and its affective transmission and subduing in picturebooks 42
  7. Chapter 3. Tengo Miedo 62
  8. Chapter 4. Literalizing emotions in Disney and Pixar 83
  9. Chapter 5. The angry caregiver 104
  10. Chapter 6. Sad girls 130
  11. Chapter 7. The cultural politics of confidence in Chetan Bhagat’s select fiction 152
  12. Chapter 8. The affective construction of Chinese child citizenship in Little Friend , 1945–1949 170
  13. Chapter 9. Taking the reluctance out of reluctant reading 193
  14. Chapter 10. Emotion and the work of decolonization 217
  15. Contributors 235
  16. Index 239
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