Urban and rural landscapes in Portuguese picture story books: reification and perceptions

Abstract

We have chosen to study a collection of three books published by the Metropolitan Lisbon Area with the purpose to disseminate the natural and cultural surroundings of the Portuguese capital.
The selected books combine pedagogical intentionality and aesthetic dimension, recreating the adventures of a girl in natural Portuguese landscapes. The main character visits different natural scenarios and discovers all sort of new special places. With a scientific review, the books emphasize, without losing their literary quality, the environmental diversity of the area, which determinates ¡ts specificity. History, geography, geology and biology intersect with magic and wonderful and propose a different way of looking at reality. As we will seek to prove, these books represent, in an original way, various forms of personal and subjective appropriation of space, particularly concerning natural landscape, thereby stimulating a variety of readings and interpretations. Both text and images depict, in their own language and stvle, the relationship between children and environment.