Listening to Heartbeat: the pulse of ecofeminism in a picturebook

Abstract

Using an ecofeminist theoretical frame along with critical content analysis of visual images, this article examines the environmental discourse of the picturebook, Heartbeat, written and illustrated by Evan Turk (2018). In this picturebook, Turk uses the heartbeat, the history, and the song of a whale to draw the reader into a sense of cosmic interconnectivity with nature. This critical content analysis of Heartbeat seeks to extend the research on evaluating environmental children’s literature by taking a deeper look at the specific ways the images and text in Heartbeat provide a unique and much needed counter-narrative to the devaluation and domination of nature. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.