Listening to Heartbeat: the pulse of ecofeminism in a picturebook

Abstract

Using an ecofeminist theoretical frame along with critical content analysis of visual images, this article examines the environmental discourse of the picturebook, Heartbeat, written and illustrated by Evan Turk (2018). In this picturebook, Turk uses the heartbeat, the history, and the song of a whale to draw the reader into a sense of cosmic interconnectivity with nature. This critical content analysis of Heartbeat seeks to extend the research on evaluating environmental children’s literature by taking a deeper look at the specific ways the images and text in Heartbeat provide a unique and much needed counter-narrative to the devaluation and domination of nature.

Keywords:

• Ecofeminism
• critical content analysis
• picturebooks
• activism
• whales
• cosmopolitanism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Since I am coming from a Western perspective, I recognize that my interpretation of ambience in this analysis is based on my own cultural understandings. The meaning of colors used in this book may be viewed very differently from another cultural perspective.

2 This research approach requires a reader-response research stance. I recognize that meaning is constructed while reading through the transactional experience between the text and the reader (Rosenblatt 1938). Depending on the stance and the experiences of the reader, multiple meanings could be derived from Heartbeat. While I refer frequently in my findings to ‘the reader’, I am drawing from my own value system, cultural understandings, and experiences as I use the visual analysis tools of Painter et al. (2014) and the theoretical ecofeminist tenets of Plumwood (1984) to analyze the text and visual images of Heartbeat.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cynthia K. Ryman

Cynthia Ryman is a doctoral candidate in Language, Reading, and Culture at the University of Arizona, who received her degree in Education at Ball State University. She holds a master’s degree in Educational Media and Technology and a second master’s degree in Storytelling from East Tennessee State University. Her current research focus involves the exploration of a cosmopolitan mindset in literacy practices.