An Artist and a Writer: YA Literature by Anna Höglund

Abstract

This article highlights the interpictorality in two YA books by the Swedish writer and illustrator Anna Höglund, Om detta talar man endast med kaniner [This Is Something You Only Talk About with Rabbits] (2013) and Att vara jag [To Be Me] (2015). The analysis of the visual intertextuality between pieces of artwork by Peter Tillberg, Frida Kahlo, Lena Cronqvist, Richard Bergh and René Magritte and five pictures from Höglund’s books thematises school, body and identity. The discursive positioning in the artworks and in Höglund’s pictures directs the readers in their decoding of Höglund’s text, offers possibilities in their interpretations and challenges the adolescent readers to make connections across different formats, such as text and image, and between different images.