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This article proposes a typology useful for analysing informational activity picturebooks, a noticeable 'genre' in the international children's book market. Because such editions indicate the active role of the child reader, the term 'co-creator' borrowed from Nina Goga seems more accurate. In the first part, the article stresses the importance of the peritext, often explicitly focusing on the co-creator. The latter part defines and elaborates on different modes and levels of interaction, engaging the co-creator manually and intellectually, simultaneously requiring and developing cognitive skills, such as visual literacy and knowledge acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores Jason Chin's construction of books and readers in two of his informational books, Redwoods and Coral Reefs. An intermodal analysis of the two books reveals that the 'silent' pictures speak as loudly as the images with text, articulating an alternate story that features the child reader's engagement with nonfiction books. In view of Louise Rosenblatt's transactional theory, the two titles foreground the often silenced but dynamic experience the child reader achieves with nonfiction to broaden the conventional remits of informational picturebooks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article asks how the theory of evolution is represented within nonfiction picturebooks. Twenty-eight picturebooks were originally identified through a series of online searches and crowdsourcing exercises. In this article we look closely at a handful of examples that lend themselves to discussing how nonfiction picturebooks manage readers' expectations, translate science through their use of metaphors, and encourage readers to engage with alternative perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper situates Margarita Engle's verse novel, The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom (2008), in both the historical context it depicts (the various wars against Spain 1850-99) and the emerging field of human-plant studies (HPS). Noting that Cuba's indigenous population was destroyed by genocide and imported illnesses, the paper suggests that the island itself, as portrayed in Engle's poetry, has colluded in human politics and played an active role in determining who can lay claim to Cuban nativity. Human-plant studies provide a rationale for suggesting that, in Engle's The Surrender Tree, the flora of the island determines the progress of the wars of independence. This argument is extended to crystals, which also 'grow' but which are not deemed to be 'living', to suggest that, in The Surrender Tree, it is not the people who choose their nation and fight for its independence or to maintain Cuba's connection to an empire of nations, but rather that the island itself chooses its people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his recent book The Lockerbie Bombing: The Search for Justice, Kenny MacAskill recounts his decision to release Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi, the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing. Eight years have passed since Al-Megrahi's release on compassionate grounds. In the book MacAskill ranges far beyond the events in which he was closely involved, recounting the bombing itself, the subsequent investigation, trial and appeals in an effort to offer a comprehensive account of the Lockerbie bombing. In this article I review the book and return to some of the key issues raised by MacAskill's decision and the broader context in which it was made. I argue that the book sheds little new light on Lockerbie and that it falls short in precisely the areas where MacAskill might have the most insight to offer. It is a rather bloodless and legalistic account that renders the complexities and the shades of grey of international politics in black and white. The case will nevertheless remain fascinating to scholars of intergovernmental relations in the UK, of para-diplomacy, and of international politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]