How Young Readers Comprehend Multilayered Diegetic Worlds: A Case Study of Cloudland

Constructing multilayered worlds is a prevalent strategy employed in fiction, especially within the genres of fantasy and fairy tales. Various techniques establish different imaginary worlds, which are either sharply demarcated or subtly intertwined. The tradition of weaving multilayered worlds into stories, along with depicting the journey of young protagonists from mundane realities to enchanting realms, is a cornerstone of children’s literature. This provides a fundamental method for fostering literary proficiency and cognitive growth among young readers. Viewing children’s reading as a voyage through multilayered fantasy worlds and back to everyday reality, readers begin by following the footsteps of protagonists and deciphering the textual and visual components, while drawing upon their real-life experiences and generating cognitive ties between the diegetic story and non-diegetic reality. This study thus examines the visual fantasy in John Burningham’s picturebook, Cloudland (1999/2017), with a particular emphasis on how young readers navigate multilayered diegetic worlds. Drawing primarily on Maria Nikolajeva’s cognitive approaches to children’s literature, this study incorporates an interview with a child in a critical stage of cognitive development. This involves a Drawing as Reflection section to validate the investigator’s hypotheses in the Close Reading section: which elements influence young readers in discerning between fantasy and reality? By analyzing the participant’s drawing and responses, this study demonstrates that real-world anchors and images play a decisive role when young readers engage with multilayered-worlds visual texts and explore the boundaries of different worlds.