Theorising Oliver Jeffers’ Picturebooks: From How to Catch a Star to Now

Theorising Oliver Jeffers’ Picturebooks: From How to Catch a Star to Now examines semiotic, affective and metafictive storytelling in Oliver Jeffers’ postmodern picturebooks from a multi-theoretical approach. This volume provides fresh insight into Jeffers’ iconotextual narratives through textual and visual analysis, exploring how his multimodal texts construct childhood and evoke emotional resonances. The book deconstructs the postmodernity of these narratives, highlighting Jeffers’ contemporary methods of storytelling through an exploration of the texts’ metafictive and self-reflective elements. From How to Catch a Star (2004) to Where to Hide a Star (2024), this book journeys through the mindscapes of Jeffers’ design and analyses the nuances of metafictive storytelling from a postmodern perspective.

Jade Dillon-Craig is Associate Professor of Children’s Literature and Young Learners at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway. She is the co-editor of Family in Children’s and Young Adult Literature (Routledge, 2023) and has published several book chapters and articles related to children’s literature, Alice studies, fairy tales, and visual texts for young readers. She is editor of the Children’s Literature in English Language Education journal and a founding board member of the Association for Research on Children’s Literature in English in Norway. Originally from Co. Limerick in Ireland, Jade now resides in Trondheim, Norway with her husband, Marcus, and their ragdoll cat, Mona.