The bedtime story wars: children's picturebooks as parodic advocacy. Issue 5 (19th October 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Waisanen, Don; Becker, Amy
• Is Part Of: Communication quarterly. Volume 68:Issue 5(2020)
• Page Start: 520
• Page End: 538
• Publication Date: 2020-10-19
• Subjects: Parody -- advocacy -- metanoia -- narrative -- recursion -- children; Communication -- Periodicals; 302.205
• DOI: 10.1080/01463373.2020.1850490
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0146-3373

Abstract

ABSTRACT: A growing force in children's literature, public figures' crossover picturebooks are designed to appeal to adults and children alike. This study takes a critical look at the crossover picturebooks of John Oliver and Stephen Colbert. As forms of parodic advocacy, their books use the doubled worlds of parody to invite audiences into corrective spaces, highlighting the influence at work in the seemingly persuasion free media of children's books, while simplifying and expanding the issues at stake through a multimodal form of activism. In particular, we add to the literature on political parody a focus on the potential for such discourses to function metanoically – alternating between original and parodied texts to engage in political revisions while forwarding moral visions on behalf of disadvantaged others. Parody and metanoia jointly invite engagement in the hope of doing something different and restoring political options through re-energized design.