Dystopian storytelling in accordion-books

Maguma's picturebooks by Tara Books

Abstract

Picturebooks involve a fundamental framework for formal, thematic, and aesthetic experimentation in literature. They surpass the category of ‘children’s literature’ and offer new ways of reading where texts and images interact in many different ways. An outstanding example is an accordion book, in which the sequential narrative undergoes a groundbreaking transformation due to the book format. This research is mainly focused on the analysis of two accordion books illustrated by Maguma, a pen name used by Marcos Guardiola: God of money (2017), based on Karl Marx’s writings, and Lucky/Happy Hans (2021), an adaptation of Brothers Grimm’s stories. Both works are published by Tara Books. These texts are politically positioned against the current economic model and seek to encourage critical thinking. In this paper we will analyse both the formal and narrative characteristics of the above-mentioned texts, which can be considered as dystopian narratives that aim to confront many problems of our society. We will also present a paratextual study focused on the contents and promotion of both accordion books, which will provide a better understanding of their illustration meaning.