Gender-inclusive picture books in the classroom: A multimodal analysis of male subjective agencies

Abstract

This article examines the representations of agentive identity of non-normative male protagonists in children's picture books in relation to the affordances of this material for classroom activities. The analysis of protagonists’ agencies in five picture books revealed varied instantiations of the New Age Boy masculinity schema. A multimodal transitivity analysis of protagonists’ agentive roles yielded a profile of individual agentive identity. Protagonists’ agentive roles when interacting with conflictive antagonist characters were compared with their agentive roles when not interacting with them. Variations were significantly associated with the social domains where the conflict took place (family, school, or community) as different ways of responding to social rejection. The findings of the study concerning the representation of protagonists’ agencies provide young readers with models of action in situations of social rejection that can help make more informed decisions for guiding the selection of gender-diverse reading material and of classroom activities of critical thinking and multimodal literacy.