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

Abstract

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.

Narrative historical review of scratch-and-sniff books and their key storytelling features

“…Reviewing currently popular scratch-and-sniff books on the bestselling list in the Amazon bookstore, Kucirkova and Tosun (2023) were able to identify three main ways in which odours tend to be incorporated into books: as additional descriptions of foods, plants, and other objects; as a technique to introduce or sustain humour in a story; and as a tool to entertain children during reading. The present historic narrative review expands on these findings with additional themes portrayed in scratch-and-sniff books over time.…”

“…While books popular in the Amazon bestseller list, as reviewed by Kucirkova and Tosun (2023), seem to predominantly use smell as an add-on feature for readers' engagement, our historical review reveals that many of the books developed for scratch-and-sniff were crafted with the theme of smell as the central narrative or sensorial element. For example, several titles are concerned with finding lost (or hidden) scents or discovering a character's favourite smell.…”

Fostering children’s agency in their learning futures: Exploring the synergy of generative AI and sensory learning

“…Focusing on the contribution of specific senses and mapping reading as an embodied phenomenon, Mangen and Velay (2010) emphasized the haptic sense. Gallagher, et al (2018) foregrounded the role of sound and the auditory sense and Kucirkova and Tosun (2023) the olfactory sense in learning. These, and other scholars, highlight the key role of senses in social sciences, and connect to what David Howes (2022) proposed as a revolution in understanding the ways people across historic periods and cultures sense the world (emphasis by the author).…”