Color as A Narrative Device in Illustration: A Systematic Review

ABSTRACT Picture books are a central medium through which children learn to interpret stories, emotions, and symbols, yet the role of color in these narratives remains underexplored and theoretically fragmented. This systematic review investigates how color in picture book illustrations has been reported to influence or appear to contribute to children's narrative comprehension and cognitive development, addressing persistent gaps in methodology and theory. Following PRISMA guidelines, four databases were systematically searched (2000–October 2024), identifying 78 eligible studies from an initial pool of 717 records. Studies were thematically categorized into four domains: the impact of color on emotional perception, cognitive processing and recognition, narrative function in storytelling, and experimental applications. Across these domains, findings demonstrate that color functions simultaneously as a representational code, a cognitive scaffold, and an affective cue—shaping emotional engagement, guiding attention and memory, structuring narrative coherence, and enabling transfer of learning in experimental contexts. This review demonstrates that color in picture book illustration is not a decorative feature but a multimodal narrative device that modulates emotional tone, scaffolds cognitive processing, and structures story coherence, supporting theories such as Dual Coding and multimodal discourse. While evidence confirms systematic links between color choices, comprehension, and engagement, significant gaps remain, particularly the lack of longitudinal and cross‐cultural studies, the absence of a unified terminology, and limited integration across disciplines. The review concludes with a call for interdisciplinary, technologically informed, and developmentally sensitive research to advance a comprehensive theoretical model of color in visual storytelling.