Approaching the Reality of Seasonal Workers through the Picture Book Migrant (Trottier & Arsenault, 2011) to Delve into Intercultural Education and Emotional Literacy: A Multimodal Study

Children’s picture books contribute to their socialization and to broadening their cultural perspective. The main objective of this article is to explore the reality of seasonal workers, specifically the story of a Mennonite family that travel from Mexico to Canada as migrant agricultural workers. To do this, we delve into the multimodal analysis of the picture book Migrant (Trottier & Arsenault, 2011). The analytical tools employed in this study are based on the model for reading visual narratives in picture books, proposed by Painter, Martin, and Unsworth (2013) and on Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2021) Visual Social Semiotics, which are useful models for the analysis of multimodal texts. The methodology is qualitative-descriptive: the main compositional and interpersonal characteristics of the picture book will be analysed in order to examine the way multimodal meanings help to explore the characters’ reality and feelings, which will offer students the possibility of enhancing emotional literacy. The main categories of the analysis will be the layout, framing and focus patterns (compositional meanings) to delve into the portrayal of the characters and into the way the protagonists are foregrounded. In addition, the types of angles, social distance and intimacy, image and gaze will be analysed in order to observe the interpersonal meanings that define the relationships between characters and readers. As a conclusion, the analysis reveals that this picture book is a useful didactic tool to explore both the feelings of seasonal workers and their reality as migrants for a short time. This contributes to introducing intercultural education and emotional literacy in the teaching-learning process, which will benefit children’s socialization and their development as global citizens. Keywords: picture books, intercultural education, emotional literacy, migration, multimodality