Today's reading
Jan. 7th, 2026 09:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anna_reads_scienceMartinez, Miriam, Catherine Stier, and Lori Falcon. 2016. “Judging a Book by Its Cover: An Investigation of Peritextual Features in Caldecott Award Books.” Children’s Literature in Education 47 (3): 225–41. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-016-9272-8.
Why am I reading this?: Because I will be analysing middle grade fiction, and I'm thinking about what will be in and out of scope of my analysis.
Conclusion: I need to be aware of the peritextual elements of the books I'm reading. While I might not end up analysing them, I do want to capture anything that I can point as as related to my research question. Further, it is a great example of writing about this kind of analysis, being clearly set out and easy to follow.
General thoughts / notes:
- Focus is all aspects other than the text, called `peritext`.
- Claim of this paper is that these are fundamental to the understanding of picture books. Argument is well presented and convincing; it also somewhat matches up to my experience of reading picture books to pre-school kids, in that they do want to talk about what is on the cover / other visual aspects, and they do use those features as a jumping off point for understanding the story. Less so for any of the peritext features that are in small print, such as copyright notices.
- previous work cited has looked mostly at endpapers; this study expands to look at multiple peritextual elements
- Content analysis of Caldecott Winners and Honor books, 1938-2013; justification "wanted to examine high quality children's literature spanning several decades". There is an acknowledgement that this might bias the sample, in that the quality of the peritextual elements may be part of why these books are selected. Sub-selection by genre was done.
- very clear about what aspects of peritext were considered and why; and how these were coded. I would put the level of detail at 'reproducible'.
- peritextual elements that are more common hold more information -- thus dust jackets and title pages give lots of story information; this is common across the time period. There are small changes in the amount of story information in endpapers and on copyright pages.
- lots of peritextual information about character and setting (place, era, season, time of day); less about plot, key elements or genre.
Why am I reading this?: Because I will be analysing middle grade fiction, and I'm thinking about what will be in and out of scope of my analysis.
Conclusion: I need to be aware of the peritextual elements of the books I'm reading. While I might not end up analysing them, I do want to capture anything that I can point as as related to my research question. Further, it is a great example of writing about this kind of analysis, being clearly set out and easy to follow.
General thoughts / notes:
- Focus is all aspects other than the text, called `peritext`.
- Claim of this paper is that these are fundamental to the understanding of picture books. Argument is well presented and convincing; it also somewhat matches up to my experience of reading picture books to pre-school kids, in that they do want to talk about what is on the cover / other visual aspects, and they do use those features as a jumping off point for understanding the story. Less so for any of the peritext features that are in small print, such as copyright notices.
- previous work cited has looked mostly at endpapers; this study expands to look at multiple peritextual elements
- Content analysis of Caldecott Winners and Honor books, 1938-2013; justification "wanted to examine high quality children's literature spanning several decades". There is an acknowledgement that this might bias the sample, in that the quality of the peritextual elements may be part of why these books are selected. Sub-selection by genre was done.
- very clear about what aspects of peritext were considered and why; and how these were coded. I would put the level of detail at 'reproducible'.
- peritextual elements that are more common hold more information -- thus dust jackets and title pages give lots of story information; this is common across the time period. There are small changes in the amount of story information in endpapers and on copyright pages.
- lots of peritextual information about character and setting (place, era, season, time of day); less about plot, key elements or genre.
