Dealing with Historical Memory in the picture book entitled Rose Blanche

Abstract

Throughout the Historical Memory, History itself, with a capital “H”, has evolved into an unlimited variety to tell big stories with a small “h”. Concurrently, the oscillation from an eminently written culture to a more visual one with images has fostered the progressive incorporation of popular culture sources in the educational sphere. Some authors approach the historical fact from a more intimate and thoughtful perspective. In this article, we analyze the importance of the picture book as a complementary material to the school textbooks to reach the understanding of History. This material allows to approach the historical Memory such as the Jewish Holocaust. At the same time, we propose an analysis model that takes the characteristics of this literary and artistic genre into consideration, in which text and image appear as an indivisible unity. In order to achieve both objectives, we study Rose Blanche, a picture book about the Nazi occupation in the Second World War.