The Significance of the Arts in Culture: Learning through Children’s Literature

Cultural studies frequently rely on the arts to reveal traditions, history, ideologies, and other aspects of a particular group. However, at what point and how are child readers asked to consider the significance of the arts to individuals’ cultural lives? This paper shares an inquiry that addresses how children’s literature, outside being a distinctive art form in itself, can offer stories that place the arts inseparably at the heart of one’s life experiences – defining culture, traditions, family history, and personal identity. The inquiry shared here focuses on a text set of 12 children’s picturebooks in which characters connect to some form of the arts in very specific and purposeful ways – facing a life challenge as a result of his or her passion for the arts or a challenge for which the arts hold resolution. Through the lens of New Historicism supported by social semiotics, a critical content analysis of these books reveals their potential for powerful, authentic insights into the role of the arts in one’s personal culture.