Picture Book Narrative Space Research

Nowadays picture books increasingly gain peoples attention, being a special category of children literature. Along with the introduction and publication of picture books, there are urgent needs to give an academic interpretation to them. Picture books combine literature and painting, given narrative features and sense of space. These lay the importance of narrative space in the studies of picture books.This paper is based on the theory of narratology, to study the interpretation of stories by single or multiple pictures; the means to achieve smooth visual effects by continuous pictures; and the dynamic between structure of book and narrative features. The studies will be conducted from the angle of narrative space with emphasizing its features. The other goal is to study how the topic is completed through multi-angle and multi-dimensional narrative space system, by defining and categorizing the narrative space in picture books, by exploring the impacting factors and summarizing the characteristics, and by integrating different layers and functions of narrative space as a whole.The study target of this paper is the picture books of which the stories are interpreted by pictures and the layout are presented as standard printed book. The study has important academic value in the areas of analyzing structure of story, summarizing narrative methods, and concluding the characteristics of picture books. The paper also serves for the purposes of providing review angles and evaluation criteria to commentators, offering directions and ideas to writers and suggestions to publishers. In addition, the study on narrative space of picture books supplement the traditional theories of narratology, open up new research directions and explore in the field of narrative space.