Remodelando el álbum ilustrado: Jimmy Liao y el autorretrato melancólico = Reshaping picturebooks: Jimmy Liao and the melancolich self-portrait

Abstract

This article aims to study the evolution in the format of picturebooks in the search for a dual audience: children and adults. Jimmy Liao is a good example to see some of the formal features of the so-called crossover literature. In his books we can see a wide range of narrative devices that help to build up multilayered stories in order to make different ways of reading them possible according to the age of the reader. The repetition of themes, narrative motifs and characters seems to create an organic work based on some recurrent metaphors that can be considered as footprints that lead to some kind of melancholic self-portrait.