ABSTRACT
Although some of the children's comments about different types of image will be described, at the centre of this chapter are their responses to picturebooks. Highlights of this conversation are also described in this chapter, and it provides a bridge between the Scottish project and the second project, which involved the same immigrant children but this time explored their responses to multilayered, non-Scottish picturebooks. Although some of the children's comments about different types of image will be described, at the centre of this chapter are their responses to picturebooks, which provide some of the most stimulating and challenging images for children, including those in the later years of primary school. The pictures also provided an opportunity to discuss the meaning of the text and 'Scottishness', and to make comparisons with stories and images from the children's home cultures and from Western popular culture. During one of the classroom readings, we discussed the subject of the thistle as the national flower of Scotland and several children chose to draw 'thistle monsters'. In this section the focus will be on their comments about the visual image itself, some of which reveal an ability to step back from personal involvement in the narrative and use a more critical 'eye' to describe and explain the text. The children in the study did not find it difficult to relate Traction Man to super-heroes from popular culture, and they came close to understanding the author's aim in subverting this image.
