"Reading Contemporary Picturebooks takes a close look at one of the most vibrant and exciting branches of children's literature - the modern picturebook. There has been an enormous increase in the quantity of high quality picturebooks published for children, yet our understanding of what it means to be visually literate and our knowledge of how readers negotiate such composite texts is limited. This book takes a sample of contemporary picturebooks and examines the features that make them unique, suggesting ways of studying and understanding the form." "Reading Contemporary Picturebooks is both an introduction to a fascinating and innovative branch of children's literature and a detailed examination of how picturebooks work." "This book will be a interest to students, teachers and researchers interested in reading, children's literature and media studies."--BOOK JACKET.