Hands That Read: The Book Body as Interface in Interactive Picture Books (2010–2025).

A theoretical framework for material and hybrid meaning-making in post-digital children’s literacy

Abstract

This article offers a theoretical account of interactive picture books as epistemic objects, proposing the book body as interface that stages meaning through material and hybrid operations. Spanning 2010–2025, from engineered print to page-registered AR, we synthesize visual-culture, multimodality, and material engagement theory to show how flaps, windows, pull-tabs, volvelles, leporello, transparencies, and AR overlays implement a mechanics of discovery (cue - action - reveal - re-framing). We formalize three construct manipulations as evidence, attentional traction, and retroactive contextualization - explaining how gestures externalize inference, steer attention, and license reinterpretation. Methodologically, we specify micro-analytic interaction scripts and propose interaction maps (states × actions) to model exploration topologies without empirical datasets. Our core contribution is a typology mapping mechanism ? information operation ? cognitive function, clarifying why multi-step, consequence-bearing interactions support spatial reasoning, causal rehearsal, classification, and language development, whereas surface busyness risks extraneous load. We theorize print - AR “hybrid bridges”: AR acts as a registered lens that models hidden processes and scales while preserving reference to the page. Accessibility and ethics are constitutive - redundant multimodal cues, inclusive imagery, privacy-by-design, and sustainable, page-complete pathways - summarized by three maxims: constrain to enable, cue before you ask, and augment, never gate. The framework offers design-to-cognition principles and a transferable vocabulary that subsequent studies can operationalize across developmental stages and cultural editions, aligning aesthetics, cognition, and ethics in post-digital picture book literacy.