Ecocritical Insights: Contemporary Concerns about Forest Ecosystems in a Greek Picturebook

This article explores the kinds of children's books—literary and informative—that can help young readers concern themselves with ecological matters; also the extent to which children’s literature can be employed for the development of an ecological awareness in young readers. Can children’s literature, beyond its inherently anthropocentric basis, also have an ecocentric orientation? Drawing on an example from Greece’s present-day book production and from the category of picturebooks that express environmental concerns, it examines representations of nature within a cultural context as well as narrative composition through two semiotic systems (words and images) in search of emerging ecological messages. In the picturebook selected as a sample—Across the Way by Thodoris Papaioannou and illustrated by Irida Samartzi—(2015) it seems that through the identification of the child reader with a tiny beetle, a suitable framework of narrative empathy is created that serves the ecocentric orientation of the book.