Over the last twenty years there has been a greater recognition of the global production of picturebooks even though English-language publishers continue to dominate markets and only a few picturebooks in other languages are translated into English every year. From the academic side, it is now more common to find picturebook studies written by international scholars in English-language journals, as well as in academic journals from non-Anglophone countries. Although global knowledge exchange on picturebooks has been widened through international children's literature congresses and specialized picturebook conferences, there is still much more room to bring together education, literacy, literature, and publishing studies professionals, not to mention those from other disciplinary fields. Here, Arizpe discusses early studies on picturebooks and describies the four directions or 'bearings' that the review of studies revealed: aesthetic, material, socio-cultural, and educational
