Children’s Olfactory Picturebooks: Charting New Trends in Early Childhood Education

Converging global trends (digitization, globalization, datafication) have influenced all aspects of children’s literacies, including children’s picturebooks. The recent turn towards embodied, affective and sensory literacies, stimulated our interest in multisensory picturebooks that engage all children’s senses, including the sense of smell (olfaction). Olfactory children’s picturebooks demand new forms of literary conversations, which capitalise on unique properties of odours and integrate these with stories. Drawing on a systematic search of children’s picturebooks about, and with, smell, in paper-based and digital formats, we identified three principal ways in which olfaction is currently embedded in children’s picturebooks: 1, as an add-on to depiction of objects (including foods, plants) and places, 2, as a device to introduce humour into a story, and 3, as an engagement tool for children’s active participation in the story. We mobilise Sipe’s (2008) concept of seven constituting elements in children’s picturebooks to describe how current olfactory picturebooks apply the elements in their design and make recommendations for future development of children’s olfactory picturebooks. Reflecting on the generative potential of literary theories and olfactory power to stimulate children’s non-linguistic embodied interactions with picturebooks, we propose some extensions to the current olfactory picturebook landscape.